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Chapter Text

The concept of unreality had never existed to Galadriel prior to the Second Age. Prior to him. But now, ages after the end of it all, unreality followed her around, keeping step with her wherever she went. Funnily enough, returning to Aman had felt the most unreal of it all. Despite the fact that she had now spent an age back in Valinor, Galadriel still did not feel like she had properly arrived. Everyone she had known in the realms of Middle Earth had long since passed but to her, the memories of her time among them were still so vivid, as if it had been but a fortnight since her triumphant return.

Her time in the mortal realms had felt real. Whereas everything in Aman had the air of artifice to it. A perfection so pristine that she could hardly believe it all. It was real, however. It was also stagnant. Some would even dare to class it as stale. As boring. Not Galadriel of course. Not to anyone's face for certain.

She had earned her peace. Fought and bled for her boredom. It was hard-won. She was grateful for it. When she had first arrived, with those last few fellows that had made her home-coming possible at last, she had wanted to forget. She had tried to. For years. It had been decades before she dared even ponder what it meant, that lingering sense of dread mixed with longing she felt that had followed her all the way from Middle Earth. Briefly, she had been convinced it was Nenya - and had stuffed the ring in some forgotten crevice in some forgotten corner of her dwellings. But of course it wasn't the ring. It was a feeling. Lingering. Gnawing at her edges. Very familiar in that. 

This old, well-known sense of doom and the boredom, those had been her most prevelent sensations. Whenever one threatened to outweigh the other, she focused her mind back on that which was becoming elusive. If she was languishing under the toll of idleness, she dared feel for the shadow and put the ring back on. If that shadow threatened to take too much of a recogniseable shape, she retreated back into mindless drudgery, pushed the shape off her mind and the ring off of her finger. 

She had not been wearing it for a couple of years when Mithrandir came to see her with an answer to her unspoken, yet oft-pondered question that really did not merit asking.

“You know already, do you not?”, the Istar said, his countenance different from when they had parted last.

Of course she did.

He looked younger now, invigorated. Galadriel had chosen to remain in her more aged form, despite being able to return to the strength and beauty of her youth at any time, on any whim. However this face, her face, aged by her time on Middle Earth, it seemed right to wear – so as to not forget what it had seen.

“I suspected, though I was not sure,” she answered the wizard. “I’ve always felt his presence. I thought I might have imagined it. – That seems silly now.”

“You know what I must ask of you? What we must ask.”

“I would rather you didn’t,” Galadriel sighed. “For you are aware that I can not tell you no, my friend.”

“I am ashamed to say that this is why I was sent to fetch you,” Mithrandir confessed haltingly, a small, apologetic smile playing around his thin lips.

Galadriel nodded and was ready to follow him all the way to the Halls of Mandos if he asked it of her. In a way she had known this was going to happen eventually. Though, she had one more question: “Why me?”

Mithrandir looked at her for a while, like she should not ask him to humour her, when they both already knew the answer.

“He will speak with none other.”

***

As Galadriel was led into the Hall of Mandos by Mithrandir, her ring finger bare, she found herself nervous to be in these parts again. She had received her praise in here, where the Valar dwelled, away from the elves. So had Mithrandir, Frodo, Elrond and eventually her husband – but since then, she had stuck with her kind in Valinor and Aqualonde. She had not wondered, had not sought. Likely, because she knew that she would have ended up on this very path a lot sooner than she had, staying away.

She had known that since a tiny sliver of him had survived his end, all of her journeys would lead her back to him in the long run. It had really only been a question of when. And so it had come to pass. 

She had wanted some peace and quiet before they inevitably met again. A pause, a break. Some rest. A time where she could believe she had reached an end point of sorts. A time where she let him rest. A time to be the Galadriel of the Third Age, the one that she had been upon her return. Aged, wise, triumphant. Bored out of her mind.

Now, she felt unsettled once more. Youthful in a way that she hadn’t in millennia. Overnight, through no concious choice of her own, she had turned into her younger form, into the young she-elf she had been when she had first left Aman so many ages ago.

Her change had not been on purpose. She had simply dreamed and dreamed and dreamed and woken up in her young body. She could will herself to turn back, to return the years lived back onto her face. But because she was as anxious and fearful as she was, she did not feel she deserved it. She was unsure again, like she had not been in such a long time. Like she had opted not to be and had embraced compliance and vacancy instead.

There was also another reason why she held on to her youthful form. Though this reason, she would not allow herself to admit to. Not even - and chiefly - to herself.

***

Finally, after one last deep breath and a nod shared with a slightly concerned-looking Mithrandir who would stand behind, Galadriel walked past the heavily guarded, dwarfing stone portal in a far-off wing in the bowels of the Halls of Mandos, and then further down. And down and down into the ancient ground.

She tried to brace herself for what was waiting for her at the end of her descend. Expected a scary, towering figure clad in iron and steel. Or a fair elven face perhaps. Maybe even a flaming eye, floating in space, grasping for all of her secrets. But she should have known that if given the chance, he would meet her in the form he’d worn when they had been closest.

There he sat on a stone bench, behind heavy bars and a thick pane of magically enforced, thrice-cursed and absolutely unbreakable crystal glass.

Halbrand.

Annatar. Mairon. Sauron. He'd had many names in his time, something he had liked to mention quite frequently when he still posessed a mouth.

He was looking up at her with a smirk on his face, chains around every extremity. Safe for his neck which held a tilted head. His eyes lit up when he saw her and ages of pain and strive and want flashed back in Galadriel’s mind like it was only yesterday that she had understood of his betrayal in Eregion. 

“You came,” he said, that old, familiar voice tugging at something deep inside Galadriel’s soul. Something she had wanted to silence long ago.

“Not for your merit,” she said, forcing her voice to sound firm and clear. “Though I can see you have some foul plan given the treacherous skin you chose to wear. – What could you seek to gain in your chains?”

“And what skin did you choose, Galadriel, and for what of your own ends?” He teased, not missing a beat, and ignored her question. “The skin you wore when we fought side by side? I remember you quite differently the last time we came face to face in Dol Guldur and you tried to expel me.”

“I remember you shriveling to bits not long after,” Galadriel spat and tried to keep from losing her temper. “Bested by hobbits and dwarfs and men and elves. You were nothing when you left. You even being allowed a physical form here is a kindness. Or pity. You failed, Sauron.”

“That is no longer my name,” he told her evenly.

“Your name does not matter. You have no name,” Galadriel said, aiming to sound undisturbed. “What matters is that you are in shackles, bound and shamed. You wield no power anymore.”

“And yet here you are,” he murmured and got up from his stone seat to take a few steps towards the barrier separating them. He walked until his chains held him back, permitted no inch forward. “I called for you and you came.”

“I can leave you just as easily,” Galadriel bit out and turned on her heel, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cheeks flush in anger.

And with something else she had not felt in ages. Something that was the opposite of boredom.

“Galadriel.”

His voice made her stop in her tracks.

“You are to at last be trialed,” she said coldly, not turning around. “And you say you’ll speak only to me on your own behalf. So speak.”

“You know my defense,” he said behind her. “You have always known. I never lied to you.”

Galadriel felt her features blazing with anger. This fury suited her younger face better, she knew it, it would have felt foreign on her older one.

“You wanted peace for Middle-Earth, or so you called it. Under your rule,” she spat and finally turned around to face him again. She could swear he was closer by the glass this time – but his shackles remained stretched taut and tight.

“Under our rule,” he corrected her. “And we were so close. When the one ring called to you. There, almost at the end when that undeserving halfling wore it. But you forsaked it, like you’ve forsaken me all those centuries ago.”

“So, it is my fault, you mean to say?” She had difficulty keeping her volume down, he infuriated her. “You cast Middle Earth into darkness because I would not take your hand?! You wish for this to be your defense?”

“I wish for you to acknowledge the part you played in laying out my path, Galadriel.”

“I take no responsibility for your wickedness and foul machinations. – I did not know who you were when I brought you back. – If you wish to drag me out for judgement as well, do what you will. But I will never share in the blame for what happened. For what you did. All alone. That was the choice I made back then, that is the choice I made when I had the ring in my grasp and that is the truth I tell you today. I am not to blame.”

“Yet you could have changed everything,” he insisted, quietly enjoying her turmoil, she was sure. Though his kind, human face gave no indication of that. “Have you never given any thought to what we talked about all those millennia ago? Have you forgotten that seeking to break a foe with violence and strength is not always the way? Sometimes adversaries need to be coaxed, to be seduced.”

“Have you forgotten that you failed to seduce me?” She shot back. 

“Ah, yes. But you failed to seduce me all the same,” he reminded her. “It is done now. But you recall that the Maiar are weakened and bound to their chosen physical forms when they covet, when they beget? I came to you begging to bind myself to you – and you refused.”

“That would not have changed anything,” Galadriel insisted, although bitter doubts gnawed at her, which she figured was exactly what he wanted. “You would have made me a terror long before I could have made you better.”

“Or you would have made me a good, just king. We could have created a legacy,” he remained. “I was ready to give all I had to you, Galadriel. Body, power and soul. And that never changed. Even when I was no more than a shadow. I was always at the edges of you, just waiting to be let in. You know it. Even now. I can always feel you.”

“And I you,” Galadriel admitted bitterly. “Stalking, hanging on to me, waiting for a moment of weakness so you can creep into my mind and play games with me."

"Where's the ring, Galadriel? Where is Nenya today?" And he had her there. "Why did you take it here with you all the way from Middle-Earth and put it on ever so often when you miss our little games? Because they're the only thing breaking this sad, decaying monotony of yours?"

Shamefully, Galadriel did not have a swift and ready retort. Which Sauron, true to form, swiftly exploited.

"What do you tell yourself when you indulge in your weakness just to feel me reach for you once more?"

"I am not weak,” she pressed out, cheeks burning and her jaw so clenched, it hurt.

“No, no you are not.– You are strong. And magnificent.”

“And tired of this conversation,” she declared. Because he was getting under her skin and because her heart quickened under his praise in a way that was disconcerting – it was that bloody skin he wore, this Halbrand-suit. It brought back memories, it made her brittle. “Do you submit to your trial or not?”

“Under one condition,” he said and Galadriel knew this was the real reason she was there. “I will submit myself to the judgement of only one.”

Galadriel took a breath and held his gaze. She knew what was coming.

“I will be trialed by you.”

“What makes you think I will not pass you over to the void without a second thought?”

“If that is your verdict for me, then that is what I will accept.” He shrugged. “I’ve been alive long enough. – But I know you will not sentence me to nothingness without a trial. I know you, Galadriel, even if you despise it. I know that you used to be driven by darkness and revenge when we first met, really met, back when we wore these faces. I know that you are capable of dark deeds. I know that you could as well rid the universe of me without pause but I know that you won’t.”

“Watch me,” she threatened and found that she had moved close enough to the glass pane to almost touch her nose to it.

“I plan to,” he said and fell back, walking backwards slowly until he found his bench without his eyes and sat down. “I am choosing the trials of Iaé’Un-Dar.”

Galadriel tilted her head. She had never heard of that.

“You would not have,” her foe said.

“Get out of my head,” she warned him off and forfeited the walls in her mind so he could not sneak in unbidden again.

“These trials are old, ancient,” he told her unperturbed by her protest. “The last one was held long before the first elf ever drew breath. It was designed for those of the Maiar who had committed a discretion upon their masters. Their masters saw them through three trials of their design where the unlucky had to prove themselves worthy of forgiveness. I assign myself to you, Galadriel, as if you were a Goddess yourself. I humble myself before you and submit to your judgement and your judgement alone.”

Galadriel found herself shake her head. Every last bit of her told her this was a bad idea, a trick, a scheme. One of his dark musings he wanted her to fall prey to, even if he had nothing left in the universe but that last little chance to make her suffer.

“What if I refuse?”

“You won’t,” he told her with quiet, unnerving confidence. “Not this time.”

Galadriel shook her head with even more vigour and retreated, mumbling ‘no, no, no’ under her breath and left him there in the shadows. Halbrand, Anatar, Mairon. Sauron. Looking to haunt her once more. She wouldn’t. He would not get her, not again. She would be free of him. She would never put Nenya on again. She would swallow the nothing that was this eternal life of hers and wither in the idleness and never look back. She ran from the dungeon and looked not left, nor right. She barged out the door and—

And landed square against Mithrandir’s chest. He steadied her with two hands on her shoulders, looked down at her. Tilted his head and softened his eyes.

“No,” she said, because the look on his face told her everything. “No. Please. Don’t make me.”

“No one else can,” he murmured and sounded legitimately sad for her. “It has to be you.”

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWO: TWO ALTARS

It was never too cold in Aman. It was also never too hot. There was wind from the east that would sometimes whip up the waves hitting the shores, but it never stormed. Everything was pleasant, always. Yet Galadriel, standing on a balcony high up on the giant fortress that housed the Halls of Mandos, was freezing and the ocean lapping at the bottom of the tower beneath her looked worryingly dark und unruly to her.

She stared down into the pit and thought she could see a fire glow at the bottom of the sea, growing ever brighter, ever more threatening. She saw the outlines of the eye first, then the pitch dark pupil inside, studying her, seeking her out. Threatening to pull her under. She leaned forward, beckoned, her hands clasping the stone railing and her upper body leaning towards the black water. The eye was focused solely on her, rising from the depths.

It sang to her, lured her in. An abject part of her knew this was her own mind playing tricks on her. But that part was not strong enough to hold her back. She leaned ever forward, transfixed by that ghost of the flaming eye, got on her tiptoes and—

“Galadriel!” It was the voice of Mithrandir that shook her out of her trance.

She stumbled back from the railing, from the pit and from the eye, and turned around to her old, trusted friend.

“Have you decided?” He asked and they both knew she could not refuse.

Giving her some time to herself to decide had been a meaningless gesture at best and a cruel theatre at worst. She could not bow out, could not flee from it. There were rules here in Aman. Everyone had a part to play and Galadriel, for all the strength she had, was nothing but a speck of dust here, nothing in the face of the Valar. The same Valar that would not see her, not even be seen by her. They always sent Mithrandir. There barely seemed to be anybody other than the two of them and the prisoner with his solemn, quiet guards in the entire fortress. Galadriel knew there were more, there had to be – but they made themselves scarce. Like she did not deserve to witness their countenance. Like she was not worthy.

A part of her, the part that had blamed herself for the near ruin of Middle Earth, and had so for centuries, thought she deserved the slight. It was the same part that made it impossible to even try and shirk the responsibility they would place upon her. It was also the part that wanted nothing to do with any of it. Still, none of it could change the outcome.

“I will fulfill the calling placed upon me,” she said and found it hard to look at Mithrandir – yet she kept looking anyway, focusing on him because she could feel the remnant of her dark daydream, the flaming eye rise on her back, out of the water, right to her.

Suddenly she felt unnaturally hot and she knew there was nothing behind her but she could swear if she turned around, she’d be faced with it and fall into its gravity, never to return.

“I wish to know what I am to do,” she voiced, sternly facing the wizard. “I have no sense of these trials Sauron whispers of.”

“They are old, very old. And they have not been held in millennia because it takes a lot of power to create them. All the Valar must come together and focus their might on a single one of them. The one who judges. It takes much of them… a costly process.”

“But… but I am not one of them,” Galadriel said, confused. “Does that not mean I can’t be a judge at all?”

“It is an exceptional case,” Mithrandir replied after a moment. “And they are prepared to make an exception.”

“Pass their power on to me?”

“Pass their power on to you.” Mithrandir repeated. “For the time of the trials.”

As if you were a Goddess yourself, Sauron’s voice reverberated in her very skull, and it filled her with unease. What if he had planned this? What if he sought to complete the transformation, he had hoped to bring onto her with the offer of the second ring of power with much greater power now? What if he sought to corrupt her and use her temporary strength to escape from his chains and cast all the realms into shadow once more?

“Is that wise?” She asked the wizard, and he sighed in response.

“I trust you,” he said merely. “Of all of us, you have had to resist the temptation of the greatest powers known the most and you never faltered in the face of it.”

“What do you mean?”

Mithrandir tilted his head, inclined it a bit as if to shrug with only his face. He knew. Galadriel was surprised – and then not at all. He had known all those ages, of course he had. About the long shadows sneaking towards Galadriel from Mordor. About the ever-wandering eye, looking to see her, to watch her every move. About Sauron’s mind, always reaching for hers, always scratching at the edges of her.

“You would have been a more formidable foe than Sauron could have ever hoped to be,” Mithrandir said, “had you followed his bid for you. He was not made to rule Middle-Earth, he was too removed from its essence. Even with all the talents and all the powers he possessed; he was a creature of Aman. He was always going to belong to its powers. You went to Middle-Earth practically a child. You were more a part of it. Your powers grew there while his were destined to fall to circumstance in the strange, foreign parts he was never meant to conquer. Had you bound yourself to him, he would have faltered, and you would have risen and there would have been no saving Middle-Earth.”

“And now they deem it right and just to hoist their godly powers onto me to handle a foe who has spent millennia trying to corrupt my very being?” Galadriel sounded mocking, not scared to question the choices being made in these parts by beings who were supposed to be superior to her in every way.

But if she was disrespectful, she did not mind them hearing. If they would not see her, they could at least listen to her.

“Like I said, I trust you,” Mithrandir repeated. “And so do the Valar.”

“Then what do I do?” She asked, feeling the finality of it all weigh on her – and felt small in the face of it, helpless. “How do I trial him? And why? Why do I not just make my verdict now? Why does he get a chance to prove his merit thrice over when he has spent so much time showing exactly who he is. Why not cast him to the void like they did Morgoth? Diminish him! This way he can finally be re-united with his master.”

“It is not that simple,” Mithrandir said merely, frustratingly. “The trials are supposed to take place as is tradition.”

Galadriel could physically feel her patience wearing thin. Her voice terse, she asked: “How is that?”

“You will design three trials and you alone will be there to witness how he does or does not pass them. You can create any world for him, any scenario to see how he’ll fair in it. What choices he will make upon which you will base your judgement. You can make him a great beast or a tiny mouse. You can strip him of his powers completely or you can make him an all-mighty God. None of it is real. It is all a glimmer under your control. You can adjust the world during the trial, or you can end it all entirely once you’ve seen enough. You have all the real power there, he has none. He comes in bare, with only the capabilities and knowledge you give him and only after will he, in his current state, become aware of how he did. About how he has been on trial at all.”

“So, I will test his decisions?” Galadriel asked to clarify.

“You will test his being. The contents of his soul,” Mithrandir answered. “You will devise of a way to determine what his essence is, beyond the corruptions of power and injury.”

“And I must be there with him? In this design?”

“You can choose to. Or you can merely witness the trials of his soul,” Mithrandir responded solemnly. “Though I must advice, the more you get involved, the more you might uncover of your own.”

Galadriel nodded, a slew of notions passing her mind at once, until she found one that was both obvious for Sauron and safe for herself. “I know what his first trial will be.”

***

Mithrandir brought Galadriel in front of the Valar and her heart was pounding in her throat as she looked upon them again. Not since her return from Middle Earth had she been faced with their grandeur. Their giant forms, their unmoving mouths, their voices booming in her head. Though they did not say much beyond her name. Beyond affirming her acceptance of the task at hand. Mithrandir led her to a seat in front of them, their huge eyes following coldly as she was placed there, like a meek child, tiny and insignificant in their presence.

The wizard gave her an encouraging nod and stepped away as the Valar came in closer, forming a circle around her and then her vision blacked out as she felt a surge of energy enveloping her from all sides. Then it began.

It was an experience like no other. Blinding, beautiful and terrible power crept upon her, spread through her veins, made her skin prick with potential. It was a bit like what she used to feel with Nenya on her finger, only a hundredfold as potent. Everything glowed, everything inside her was set alight. She understood in an instant how she would be able to form worlds, to create for herself what only the One was understood to be able to.

It is not real, she heard her own voice whisper dimly in the back of her mind and she focused on it, held on and amplified it, so as to keep her grounded to her own body. None of it is real. I can create only a mirage; I can control only a dreamscape. These powers are not mine. They will be taken from me again. I cannot keep them.

She was caught up in a whirlwind of brazen light and floating speckles, blurring her vision, and it all built and built upon each other. The drumming in her head multiplied and ever multiplied until it all got too much and overwhelmed her senses. She fell into blackness and then, for a long time, there was nothing.

***

She came to in the quarters set aside for her, in that tower with the balcony, and she barely had time to gather her bearings before Mithrandir came to collect her once more. The wizard quietly led her down again, deep under the walls of the fortress, further into the ground to where he waited for her.

Halbrand’s form cloaking Sauron’s deception still took her aback, though it was not as striking now, the second time around. He smirked at her in triumph, and she despised the fact that he perceived her accepting the role of judge as a personal win. This alone almost made her turn around and forsake it all, live a life of an outcast or diminish herself from existence. Still, she held firm, if only to not give him the satisfaction.

Sauron got up from his resting place at the back of his dungeon and looked from her to Mithrandir as he all but sauntered to an altar that had materialized between him and the crystal boundary in front. The one that separated them from each other. Under the silent, stony gazes of his guards he laid himself down flat on his back onto the stone. Galadriel finally took a moment to really look at his jailors and realized they were elven kind – and that they were different ones from the last time she had been there.

The guards readied themselves as the chains around Sauron’s legs, wrists and neck were re-enforced with iron clasps emerging from the altar, fixing him to the surface in a double bind. Only then did the four guards step into formation in front of the glass, touch their hands to it, whisper something unintelligible and the boundary disappeared.

The elves gave way and Galadriel followed Mithrandir’s lead walking inside the cell. As they did, a second altar, right next to Sauron’s, rose from the ground, as if the stones had a mind of their own, forming a flat surface on their own accord. Galadriel knew immediately that this one was for her.

“Gandalf, the White. Glad to see you made it out alive,” Sauron said glibly to the Istar, only able to move his head an inch, following the two of them with his eyes as they walked up to him. “I’d congratulate you on defeating me at last, but it seems in the end it was a tiny little Hobbit that bested me.”

“I have not missed that mouth on you, Sauron,” Mithrandir deadpanned immediately and ignored him otherwise.

“Please, call me Mairon,” the prisoner said, all charm, all Halbrand in a way that made Galadriel’s blood boil – and evidently with that, her foe was done with the wizard and back to tormenting her, because he fixed his gaze upon her, looking up.

Quicker than Galadriel could have anticipated, he flicked his wrist so that he could catch hers between his fingers and squeezed it for the moment it took for her to understand that he had just grabbed her and before she could whip her arm out of his grip.

“Do not dare touch me,” she hissed and stepped out of reach of him, so she bumped into the newly formed altar at her back. Her skin burned with the ghost of his fingertips.

“Forgive me,” Sauron said and sounded decidedly unrepentant. “I merely wished to be certain you were really here.”

As if he was surprised, he had orchestrated this! Galadriel was furious – and snapped.

“I do not know what scheme you have in mind here, but I will not be your tool,” she warned him cuttingly, leaning forward but mindful of not getting too close again. “You have always underestimated me, so whatever your plan is, it will not succeed, not while I am alive.”

“Underestimated you?” He echoed. “I would never. I trust your judgement. Above all else. – Tell me, how does it feel having all that power course through your veins? Permeate every increment of your body? I can feel it radiate off of you… all the strength of the Valar. Do you understand what I wanted to give you now, all those years ago?”

“Silence!”, bellowed Mithrandir and Sauron obliged with a glint in his eye.

Galadriel steadied herself, ignored the foul taste in her mouth and the worry brought up by Sauron’s taunts and called herself to order. She took a deep breath and finally lay down on the cold stony table that was just the right size for her. Mithrandir turned his back on Sauron to face her, squeezed her shoulder and nodded. She did the same and then stared up at the ceiling, not fully knowing what to expect, only that it was too late to turn back now. The only way out was through, and she hoped beyond hope, that she would be up to the task.

The dust above her started glowing in a bright bluish hue, much like it had when she was encircled by the Valar. Flecks of dust first, glistening and blinking, then more of them until they formed spiraling ropes that twisted around each other and then cascaded downwards. Towards her. Towards Sauron. She twisted her head around to find him doing the same. Their eyes met and she set her jaw tight and her forehead into a frown. His face betrayed nothing, only his eyes were alight with something she could not name.

“What have you planned for me, Galadriel?” His voice sounded soft, almost reverential.

He did not get an answer, for then the glowing dust fell on him, and his eyes closed as his body lost all its tension and his head lulled back. He was out.

“And so, the Great Dark Lord himself is in your realm now, entirely at your mercy,” Gandalf declared and stepped away from between the two altars as the glistening mist wallowed over from Sauron’s form to Galadriel’s until she saw only white, connecting them together. “May the first of his trials begin.”

***

Galadriel only witnessed this trial. She had decided the first one should be what so many living beings wished so many times during their days, be they long or short: the chance to do over. To do better.

She left Sauron… or Mairon as he was called before, with nothing but a vague sense of dread, something she willed for him to be a warning to not make the wrong choices. And all the knowledge he had had before he first went to Middle Earth as Morgoth’s errand boy – but with no sense of the outcome. She let the story play out thusly. Without interference, without changing a single thing. She wanted to know if things would turn out different. Whether or not, if given the chance, her foe would make other choices. Or if he would do it all over again the same ruinous way.

***

An undeterminable time later, Galadriel came back to her body. Her face was stiff with dried tears, while her bones felt heavy and old and she opened her eyes to find her head had fallen to the side, facing Sauron again. He, too, blinked and became aware of her. She could see it come back to him, watch him understand what his first trial had entailed and that he had utterly and completely failed it.

As soon as he was able to, he used what movement he could make in his chains to shrug at her.

“What did you expect?” He asked casually. “Everything happened as it did for a reason. Why waste a whole trial on torturing yourself?”

Chapter Text

CHAPTER THREE: AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK

Galadriel sat up faster than she should have, though she masked her immediate dizziness well, despite having to hold on to the edge of her altar for support. Her head was spinning, all the pain and misery of having watched the last centuries on Middle Earth play out once more in all their gory and devastating detail – and by her own choice, as Sauron had so infuriatingly pointed out.

“I suppose it was no torture for you?” She bit out angrily. “Reliving your glory days as a tyrant. As a soulless demon!”

She heard herself shriek, was dimly aware of the guards stepping to the crystal pane to dissolve it once more to let her out, and of Mithrandir, watching them from the other side.

“A soulless demon,” Sauron repeated. “You see so much, yet you do not fathom what it signifies.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” She spat, had no patience for him after having experienced over again all the horror he had inflicted in a condensed form which made it both more immediate and more painful because she had had no rest in the memory.

All the moments of reinvigoration and tranquility she had experienced in her own time on Middle-Earth, she had now experienced like a shadow hovering over Sauron. It had been a barrage of pain, of anguish; a desperate will to power that clung to his very being and could never be satisfied. There had been no rest for him, no reprieve. No moment of peace. Even in his moments of triumph, he had never been at ease. The darkness in him could not be placated, not even for a moment.

“How could I have enjoyed a minute of that?” He asked her as if he had read her mind – and maybe be had.

She was too weakened to block him out, she needed to leave the dungeon so he could not get to her anymore. The guards flanked the path out and Galadriel returned to shaky feet and left him behind.

“I was barely real after I lost my physical form. You have seen it!” Sauron called out after her. “I was nothing but a husk. GALADRIEL!”

Galadriel drowned out his voice, quickened her steps and walked right past Mithrandir who fell into step with. And she did not look back.

***

The next morning came and then the next and the next after that. The good thing was that no one imposed a timeline on her. All of them, in their immortality, had nothing but time. Galadriel could have taken years before putting Sauron through his second trial – and had it not been for the fact that she was not allowed to leave with the powers she had been given, she maybe would have.

As it was, the Valar’s strength occupying her body was taking more of a toll than she had previously expected. There was a heaviness to them that weighed on her. In the dark nights she could feel it pull her into terrifying visions. During the days they made her impatient and grim. Twice she resisted the urge to march into the depths and blow Sauron to smithereens herself until no trace of him remained. She had not loathed this much since she was young. But worst of all was the sharpness of her mind, the clarity with which she remembered. Not just of his terror but of her own part of it. Or the parts she had assigned to her responsibility long ago.

She could not shake the implications that she could have acted differently. She could not escape the blame of having dragged Sauron back to Middle Earth from Númenor by her own clenched fists. It was this notion, more than caring about the outcome of the trial or its ramifications, that had er set up the second trial in the end. It was her own desire to clear her conscience once and for all and she dimly knew it was wrong to waste a trial on that, but she did it anyway. She had been granted the power to, after all.

***

The second trial began much as the first had and the process came easier now with familiarity. Sauron’s thinly veiled taunts did not disturb her as much as they had the first time. When she told him harshly to hold his peace and be quiet, he listened. They went under again, the both of them. But this time, she took herself out of the equation.

She watched it all unfold much the way it had, still just a quiet observer. Still, Mairon came to Middle Earth with just his previous knowledge of Aman. Still, he spent his first centuries there doing Morgoth’s dirty work. Still, he hid in the shadows after Morgoths defeat and shirked the responsibility of returning to Aman to face judgement and hid in Middle Earth instead. Still, he took the skin of Halbrand and hid among men before finally setting out on a boat. Still the boat was attacked by a sea creature and still his gang of survivors found themselves on their makeshift raft in dire need of rescue. Only this time, Galadriel stayed on her ship as it passed the veil into Valinor. This time, she did not jump into the water and swam until fatefully, she ended up on his raft. This time, Galadriel did not convince him to return to Middle Earth with her, did not place a crown on his head and take him back to her kin to birth the idea of the rings that would doom them all.

Many things were different, naturally. Halbrand and his motley crew ended up in the path of Elendir’s Númenorian ship and they were rescued swiftly. Without the commotion on the island that Galadriels being there had caused, Halbrand was integrated into Númernorian society quickly. He became a smith and worked for a handful of years making shields and swords and breastplates for the battalions.

While the elves in Middle-Earth saw the rise of Adar and his orcs fulfil their quest of casting the Southlands into shadow and creating the land of Mordor, Númenor remained far away from it all, concerned with their own matters. The elves in Middle Earth grew desperate as their powers faded and finally sent out an emissary to rally the island folk back to their side to be their aid. They sent Elrond and he tried his best, much in the same way that Galadriel had and finally, after much strive, he managed to convince them to help in their war against Adar and sail back to Middle Earth with him.

Only on the boat was also a smith. Halbrand was his name and he had become close with a young royal named Isildur, heir of Erendil, who had become obsessed with returning to Middle Earth and establish himself there. The young man had convinced Halbrand to come with him as his smith and his confidant and against his better judgement – Galadriel could see the conflict in him – he followed along. Once there, the story went different, but much the same. Adar had amassed large numbers of orcs, the Elves feared they were losing their powers, many returned to Valinor and the few that remained were increasingly desperate.

After Erendil fell in battle, Isildur took on his mantle. He only grew more powerful when Númenor drowned in the sea, and he alone remained as the sole royal of his people – those in Middle Earth and the survivors who came to shore a short time later. He was their king now and demanded his people be given lands by the elves for their continued aid.

The eleves though were too occupied with their fear of fading and their war against Mordor to oblige. Elrond tried his best to sway the Lords and Ladies, but he failed. Isildur, with Halbrand at his side, now as his chief advisor, became angry at the neglect. An anger that grew even grander once the Elves attacked the dwarfes, who had offered the Númenorians shelter when the Elves would not. Isildur helped defend Khazad-dûm where the Elves wanted to get their hands on the Mithril in the deep of the mines by force and declared himself against them.

By then, ambition and frustration had taken hold in Halbrand in equal measure and he remembered who he was. Remembered that he had originally set out to set Middle-Earth back to right when he agreed to follow Isildur. He had wanted to right his wrongs and discovered that the Elves looked to narrowly only at their own persistence and fate and cared apparently little for the mortals. He began honing his skills again, schemed for more and more power.

By the time Elrond became aware of who the silver-tongued hand of the King Isildur really was, the dwarves had aligned themselves with Isildur, given what of the Mithril they could and helped create one ring of power that was placed on Isildur’s finger and listened only to Halbrand, to Sauron, who had created it. Isildurs army, with that great power, defeated Adar. But instead of casting out the shadows and killing the orcs, they brought them into the fold. Nearly all of the Kingdoms of Men in Middle Earth aligned themselves with Isildur, the new King of Mordor. As did the dwarves.

They helped built a giant, dark city at the foot of Mount Doom where men lived side by side with orcs and the Uruk-Hai were created by cross-breeding the species. Years of war and destruction followed as the Elves moved against the Unholy Alliance with all their might – but the Mithril they had managed to steal from the dwarves was no match to that Isildur and the dwarves still had access to. In a bid to destroy the enemy from within, the elves revealed that Halbrand was indeed Sauron but instead of deterring the bonds, he was accepted. Isildur, who had long since been little more than Sauron’s mouthpiece, gave up his title and crown to Sauron, whose infinite life promised direction and security for the men following him.

His reign spread, far beyond the dark reaches of Mordor. It reached into the light, united many banners underneath it. Finally, after one devastating last battle, the elves gave up and declared the battle for Middle Earth lost. After the last of them had left to return to Valinor, Middle Earth fell to darkness.

Though it was not immediate. For four centuries, Sauron ruled over men, dwarves, hobbits and lands and while there was bickering among his peoples, order remained. Only as it always is with power, it is coveted and there was an attempt made on his life that succeeded in so far as that it split him from his form and because they took the ring, which he had been infusing with much of his own strength, he could not return to a physical form. As Sauron tried to regain control, what of Middle Earth that had managed to stay light and good fell into decay as all the mortal beings killed each other in pursuit of the one ring. Sauron’s power flared up here and there – and the Istars were sent to support the small subset of men and dwarves who realized the poison that was the one ring and the shadow of Sauron above it all. The ones who rebelled against the terror and wanted to free Middle Earth of the tyranny of darkness.

Rallied around Mithrandir, it was the hobbits once more that defeated the darkness. The rebels got hold of the ring after it was lost in a battle and went on their quest to destroy the ring in the flames in which it had been created and finally succeeded. At long last Middle Earth was free of Sauron but beyond him lay scorched earth and more troubles yet. It would be another age yet until there was peace in the lands… or relative peace. Because Galadriel had seen that wherever mankind was involved, the hunger for power and resources would always beget war.

***

Still, the second trial came to a close. This time Galadriel was more aware as the glimmer lifted, as she returned to the truth. This time, it was a little bit harder to shake what she had seen because of the many implications she carried forth with her.

One: Sauron had fallen to darkness all the same, so his soul was always going to bend to the call of darkness and subjugation. Two: He had done so without Galadriel lifting a finger to inadvertently play into his hand.

She opened her eyes to the rocky ceiling above her in Sauron’s cell and felt a relief that was too grand to put into words. It was not her fault! Her bringing him back to Middle Earth ultimately only hastened the entire ordeal a little bit. Even more so, it seemed that her involvement had given the elves a fighting chance. Her involvement had prevented the whole human race falling behind Sauron and his evil. That was a good thing. She was absolved.

“Are you really?”, Sauron muttered, and his voice cut through the silence like a knife, even if he was speaking softly and without taunt. “Absolved, Galadriel?”

He had read her thoughts again and Galadriel fortified her mind. She wanted to yell at him and choke him with her bare hands for daring to try and diminish her victory, but she willed herself to be calm and not allow him the triumph of shaking her.

“You have seen what I have seen,” she said instead, and did not move but did not look at him either. “You would have fallen to tyranny and evil and would have sought to destroy Middle Earth with or without any of my doing.”

“That is only half true, though,” he argued and his calm demeanor unnerved Galadriel more than him screaming ever could have.

“And how, pray tell, is that so?” She asked impatiently and finally sat up, though she immediately turned her back to him and looked at the dungeon wall instead of at him or his silent guards and Mithrandir on the other side of the crystal pane.

“Because you only took yourself out,” he replied evenly. “You did not let yourself see what could have been if you had accepted my hand.”

“You did not offer your hand, you offered corruption,” she snapped without missing a beat and she was glad to have thought it so quickly, because his words dug deep inside her and swept away all of her relief of being blameless in one swift brush.

“If you say so,” Sauron relented and then fell silent.

And that was actually worse than if he had gone on trying to unsettle her.

He remained mum even when she left him and did not look at her. Not with his eyes at least. She could feel his mind prodding as long as it could, until the crystal glass went up again and shielded him away. All the way up to her tower room, accompanied by Mithrandir in perfect silence, Galadriel was fuming. She would not accept this coming from him. Snake. Deceiver. She was not to blame, she did nothing wrong. Her forsaking him had not made a difference. Her saying yes to him was not something he was owed to keep from burning the world down! She could barely see, she was so angry.

***

 “The audacity of that foul creature!” She exclaimed as soon as the doors closed behind her and the wizard. “To infer that… – I do not require a third trial. I can cast my judgement now.”

She turned around to Mithrandir, half-expecting him to be joyous that this farce was over. But instead, he looked pained.

“What?” She asked him and felt uneasy, like she had missed something.

“I must admit I have kept something from you,” the wizard said. “I hoped to never have to share it with you.”

“Tell me.”

“The third trial must happen,” Mithrandir replied, looking pale and pained. “And it must succeed.”

“Succeed how?” Galadriel did not grasp his meaning yet and part of her wished she would never have to. “To reach a verdict?”

“To reach one that does not condemn him to the Void or a life in chains.”

“What?!” Galadriel was aghast. “You want me to let him walk free?”

“We need you to ensure that he can.”

“Why?!” Her voice was breaking with sheer indignation.

She did not understand anything anymore and somehow, she felt betrayed, like she was caught up in a game she hadn’t known she was playing.

“Because both of the other alternatives are too dangerous.”

“I do not understand.”

Mithrandir gave her an apologetic look and sighed a long, labored sigh. “Please, have a seat.”

He gestured towards the long chair off to the side and walked Galadriel over to it as if she were a sick child in need of medicine and she supposed what he would tell her next would be just as bitter.

“We can not banish him to the void, and we cannot be sure where he will end up if we simply dispose of him.”

Galadriel slanted her eyes, willing him to continue.

“Have you ever heard about what happened to Morgoth when he perished?”

“He was cast out of the Door of Night into the Timeless Void where he remains without power,” Galadriel answered and felt like a scholarly child, repeating what she had been taught in her youth.

“Yet he is not. Without power. There are prophecies. About his return. And such as it is, Morgoth can not be eradicated, not even from the Void. Some even say he still holds power over this realm and all the others, always whispering, always sowing darkness, It is said he could return one day and bring about Dagor Dagorath, the Battle of Battles that could threaten all that is, was and will be. So you understand why we can not cast Sauron through that same Door of Night. Lest master and servant reunite beyond our reach and at last return together to this world and destroy us all.”

“Why not keep Sauron enchained here then? He has been here long enough.”

“Yet never to be guarded by the same guards twice,” Mithrandir said grimly. “Be it elves or Maiar, he will try to corrupt them. He can not be allowed too much influence on any one being, lest he use them to free himself and wreak havoc once more.”

“Yet you sent me down to him twice already and wish for me to do it a third time,” Galadriel said bitterly. “Am I not any one being?”

“You are different.”

“Why?”

“Because you are different to him,” Mithrandir replied. “You are the only one with any chance to redeem him.”

“He is to be redeemed?!” Galadriel could not fathom it. Her stomach turned in her body, making her feel quite ill.

“So he can be set free to a place where he can not cause any more harm. It has to be this way or we will all perish.”

“How? How am I supposed to do that? I am only one elf! Not even a Maiar! Why do I have to ensure the Impossible?”

“Because if you don’t, then we have no hope.”

“Is there never an end to his villainy?”

“We hope it will end with you.”

Galadriel stood up and started pacing in frustration.

“This isn’t fair. Have I not done enough?”

“You at least have to try.”

“Or I could jump from this window into the pits and meet Morgoth in the Great Void myself,” she threatened, though they both knew it was a hollow one. “How could he ever be redeemed?”

“There was a reason Sauron would not accept any other judgement than this, there was a reason he held out so long to try and break from his chains. He asked for you. Only you. You must already know the way. I am certain you do.”

Something about the wizard was urgent, even curious – and Galadriel understood in an instant, that he did not know, had not heard what passed between Galadriel and Sauron, or had not grasped the full meaning of it. He did not know how she had to proceed, but she did. And she hated it.

***

The third trial was set up for the day after. Galadriel allowed herself only the night to gather her wits and prepare herself. Any time longer and she would have faltered. Yet, such as it was, she asked Mithrandir to stand by once more outside of the cell as she went to lie on her altar, ignoring Sauron’s gloating presence. All of this seemed unfair to her. She should not be the one to have to bear all this pressure. She should have been able to find some solace and camaraderie in her preparations.

But the thought of confiding in her husband or Elrond about what was asked of her made her feel even worse than going into it completely alone.

It was just so deeply twisted that she should carry the burden of redeeming a creature that had never shown any will to redeem himself.

“You are always so sure about my depravity,” Sauron nearly whispered from where he was already strapped in and Galadriel cursed herself, reinforcing her mental guard once more. 

She was so whittled down by her fear of what she had to do, she had slipped yet again and opened her mind right up for him. She could not wait to have him under control so he knew only what she wanted him to.

“I did try to redeem myself,” he murmured and she could tell that he had turned his face to her but she refused to do the same as the flickers of blue light started appearing overhead.

Soon they would be linked and bound together once more. Only this time, Galadriel would not merely be witnessing what he did. This time, she would be along for the ride, for every grizzly moment of it. This time, she would have to attempt to drag him off the edge of megalomaniac madness by his hair.

“When you whispered to Celibrimbor about the rings?” She meant it to be a taunt and looked at him in turn, just so he could read on her face how little she believed his claims.

“When you found me in the ocean,” he said. “How do you think a group of humans on a raft would end up so close to the veil to Valinor when I perfectly knew how to navigate? I never wanted to go anywhere else. The war was over. I had ran and ran and finally the grasp of Morgoth had lessened enough to hear myself think again. I was ready to face judgement in Aman. I wanted to pass the veil. But you came and it never happened. And then you would not let me rest. You made me come to Middle Earth with you and I believed… back then I believed you were the path to my redemption. And then I saw what forces were afoot and you cast me out and… whatever happened, happened. – But it is not true what you believe. That I never tried to repent. I did. You would not let me.”

“I. Am. Not. To. Blame,” Galadriel nearly spit out from between gritted teeth and she whipped her head around, unable to look at him any longer.

She gave herself over to the lights and fell and fell into the realm and time of her own design, all the while fuming. She refused to accept what Sauron said. That she could have changed him and thus the path of history. Refused to allow a reality where one being should bear responsibility for the saving of another.

Then she was on open water, standing on a lifeboat. The sea around them was calm and seemed unreal. Because it was. It was Sauron’s work, messing with her head, trapping her in a vision of his making. And quickly Galadriel found herself in her old body, almost quickly enough to forget that really, beneath it all, this was her design. This was her making, bringing them back to that point in time where the third trial would begin with one of her choices, not his.

She reminded herself. This is not real. I have all the power here. It calmed her. She blinked. His lips were moving and finally she could hear him. She had replayed this conversation so many times in her mind, she knew exactly what she had said before, what she had refused. And what he would say next.

“I see no difference,” he murmured, so close to her she could feel his warm breath on her skin. She would need to get used to that again.

She put up her brother’s dagger up to his neck, grazing his skin so it almost drew blood. “And that is why I will never be at your side.”

He looked down at her and his features darkened just as the sky above them. “You have no choice. Without me your people will fade. The shadow will spread and bring darkness to all the world. You need me.”

“I should have left you on the sea!”

“A sea you were on because the elves cast you out,” he argued, anger rising in him that Galadriel had not seen of him a single time in his dungeon. “What will they say when you tell them that you were my ally? Will you tell them that Sauron lives because of you?”

Galadriel took a step back and schooled her features to look scared.

This is not real, she told herself. This is not how it happened.

And you will die because of me, was what she had said back then. But she did not say it now.

Sauron, Halbrand, Mairon… whomever it was she was fighting with in that moment – he halted upon her stumbling backwards, sort of deflating as she met his violence with retreat and measure, rather than attacking him with the same fervor. She could not appear to give up too easily. For his choices to be sincere, he needed to believe this was all happening for the first time and that she really was battling with her loyalties. If she were, she would want reassurances.

“I will not hurt innocent people,” she said carefully as the skies overhead cleared up to a bright blue.

She read on his features the moment he thought he had broken her, or swayed her to his side, whichever way. It was a nasty shade of elation.

“I will not let you rule me,” she said, just because she could not stomach the expression and allow him to think she would be one of his acolytes.

“I would not dare,” he said, all anger disappearing from his fair features. “I told you, we will make rings of the Mithril. Celibrimbor and I. Rings that will hold great power. Two of them. We will go forth together, you and I. – Will you join me then, Galadriel… Artanis, daughter of Finarfin?”

He offered her his hand one more time.

This is not real. This is not how it happened, she thought. But it was going to happen now.

Galadriel breathed in, held Sauron’s gaze… and took his hand.

“Yes.”

Chapter Text

CHAPTER FOUR: THE SECOND RING

As soon as Galadriel said the word and held on to his elbow as he held hers – the way they had shook on journeying to Middle Earth together on that last day in Númenor – the scenery around her shifted. No longer were they adrift on a makeshift raft at sea but back in Eregion by the peaceful little brook, a side arm of the Glanduin. Galadriel knew they had never really left. Sauron, or Halbrand, as was the name he had chosen to wear here, had released her from the binds of his vision and she nearly lost her footing when he let go of her arm as well. She felt dizzy. She knew this was all a trial, none of it real. But it felt real. Real enough to lose herself to it.

The fear of him she felt was real. The dread of what was to come felt real as well. The joy in his eyes as she looked upon them once more also felt real. Though if it was sincere or just gloating, she could not say. She had to think hard and fast about how she would act if all of this were in fact reality and not just a last-ditch effort to save all the worlds from his creature. How would she act if she did not know how the future would go, what he would become? How would she act if before her stood not the Sauron who had tricked and fooled all the Kings and Queens of Middle Earth into submission and reigned in terror for many dark years – but the Sauron who had been a servant of Morgoth, a Dark Lord in styling, but not yet so far gone that he could not be reached?

Before her stood a Maiar in a man's body. Not a flaming eye, not an empty husk, as he had called it himself in his dungeon. Maybe there was hope for him yet. Maybe when he promised her that with her at his side, he could cast out his own darkness, he had been sincere. Still, that was a slim chance because if there was one thing beside terror he was known for, it was his lies. She knew that. The old Galadriel, the real one in this situation, she would have known that much, too.

So what would she do first? She felt like she was losing time, too many conflicting emotions passed through her, too many ways whichever reaction she gave, could go. Halbrand stood opposite her, merely watching. studying her. He did not trust her silence either. And he held her brother’s dagger in his hand still.

Until he didn’t.

He grabbed her wrist and put the blade back into her hand. A cautious sign of good will. Yet, in consequence futile because Galadriel knew if she tried to strike him again, he would just block her move – again. He knew this as well but still inclined his head at her in a gesture of demurity.

“I do not wish for us to be enemies,” he said. “I never lied to you, Galadriel. I believe we were brought together for a reason. Together we can set Middle Earth to right.”

“What is your plan, then?” She heard herself ask and allowed herself to fall into the farce, allowed herself the illusion that this was real.

It would help convince him as well, the only way she was going to survive. It was also the only way he was going to act based on the true contents of his soul – he could not suspect anything. For that would taint the whole trial.

“Will you grab the rings for yourself as soon as they are made?”, she asked him, as she expected she would have if this had happened in earnest.

“No,” he shook his head, a small smile playing around his lips like she had just made a fool of herself. “That would not be wise at all.”

“So, what then? What do you plan to do?”

“Do you trust me?”, he asked her and Galadriel had to fight down a bitter chuckle.

“No,” she replied without missing a beat.

“We will have to work on that,” he quipped with a raised eyebrow and Galadriel felt her chest burn with the absurdity of all of it.

In the true version of events, she never experienced this. She had cast him out and never seen that side of him again. That easy, almost comical man who was Halbrand. The man she had thought she’d known. She had divorced the two in her mind after and then for centuries to come. Sauron and Halbrand, they were two different beings almost. To now see them fused together, as one, gave her a headache.

“How could I ever?! - Trust you again.” She asked but before he could wise-crack an answer, they were interrupted.

“Galadriel, Halbrand,” called a voice to them from up the hill; Elrond. “Come quick, Celibrimbor needs you.”

Halbrand looked at Galadriel once more and nodded, as if to ensure her silence, and Galadriel hated everything about it, but still, she nodded back.

***

Elrond led Galadriel and Halbrand back into the forge where Celibrimbor stood at his station and walked towards them as soon as they came in sight.

“I have determined that the purity of the lesser ores in the alloy is crucial,” he told them, looked between Galadriel and Halbrand before settling on Galadriel as his features turned solemn and Galadriel understood – and knew what was coming anyway. “I need gold and silver of the most exquisite quality. I need gold and silver from Valinor.” All of their eyes went to her brother’s dagger in her hand. “True creation requires sacrifice.”

Galadriel took a deep breath and finally nodded, then looked at the men around her. “The powers we forge today must be for the elves alone, untouched by other hands.”

She gave Halbrand a pointed look who merely raised a corner of his mouth in a tilted smile.

“That sounds wise,” he said easily. “Men are too fickle, too power-hungry. They should not be trusted with strength such as this. – But then who should get the second ring? If the first one is meant for King Gil-galad? Perhaps you, Celibrimbor?”

“No, no, my boy.” Celibrimbor waved off the suggestion but looked very pleased and flattered. “That is a matter we shall discuss with the King. Let’s first get to work making them.”

The smith looked expectantly to Galadriel, and she knew it was time to part with her dagger. She thought about suggesting making a third ring for balance, but she opted to let Halbrand lead the way. This was his trial after all.

***

The forging of two rings did not take less time than that of three, mostly because Celibrimbor could not decide which two of the three gems in his posession should be used. In the end, he settled on the white one and the blue, citing the calmness of the colours as good fortune.

As Celibrimbor got started on inserting them into the delicate bands, Halbrand looked on like a hawk. Celibrimbor did the work by himself, which Halbrand accepted with a dignity that suggested he truly did not mind being left out. Galadriel knew it must have killed him to be on the sidelines, but he bore it with grace. His deception was so seamless, so masterful, she had half a mind to forgive herself for not suspecting him sooner.

It was not just his words; it was his whole demeanor. He did not seem ancient or hardened, not any more than a man in the position he claimed to be in, would be. He seemed young actually, there was a certain… swagger about him that spoke of folly and joy. Two things Galadriel could never marry to the anguish and despair synonymous with Sauron. Sauron was an evil, pure evil, a worthy successor to Morgoth. One-dimensional and really rather void of anything beyond a will to power for power’s sake. Halbrand on the other hand? He seemed rich in facets, conflicted and resolute and troubled and hopeful and caring and vicious and manipulative and sincere. And Galadriel had no idea which of these qualities were real. If none of them were… or worse, if it was all of them. She did not know what to do with that.

She stood out on the balcony of the forge as the work proceeded inside, her mind occupied, until what must have been hours later, she heard Halbrand’s voice behind her.

“It is done,” he said and once again he looked at her as if she was a flight risk, but she simply followed him back, playing her part.

She barely got a glimpse of the finished rings before the King strode into the forge, cape billowing behind him, with his advisors in tow. Celimbrimbor presented him with the rings and placed the golden one with the blue stone on his finger with great gravitas.

Galadriel held her breath as she saw the effect the ring had on Gil-galad instantly. It was a visible shiver than ran through him and Galadriel remembered the first time she put Nenya on vividly. It was a singular feeling.

“Ah,” Gil-galad murmured after a moment of gathering himself. “I can feel it. This shall serve us well. An effort well completed, Celebrimbor.”

“Thank you, my king,” Celebrimbor beamed with pride. “Though it would not have been possible with Galadriel and her guest.” He inclined his head to Galadriel and Halbrand, who both nodded in unison. “Which brings me to… forgive me, my king, we were talking earlier about who should bear the second ring. Something Lord Halbrand said when we were fashioning the rings... It would be prudent, I think, to separate them. That way, should one fall into the wrong hands, the enemy can not get to the second in the same attack. Lord Halbrand also said, and I very much agree, that such power requires a balance. So I contemplated on how such a balance might be achieved and I determined that it would be most wise that the second ring should be carried by a female. - Now, since the Queen is surely to be loath to be separated from you, I would humbly suggest that Commander Galadriel receive the second.”

Galadriel looked from Celebrimbor to Gil-galad and back to Halbrand, whose face was the picture of innocence. Galadriel knew this suggestion was preposterous. Yes, in the end she did receive Nenya but not because Gil-galad wanted her to. He was furious with her still for ignoring his orders. His face signified as much – but Celibrimbor was not done.

“Surely, Galadriel will be tasked with defending our lands to the South – if she were thus fortified, with the power of this second ring, it would help us all rest easier here, would it not?”

Gil-galad frowned but this must have struck a chord with him for he turned slowly to Galadriel, studying her. “What do you think, Commander Galadriel? Do you deem yourself worthy of this honor?”

He sounded like he expected her to grovel, to say no. She did not do him that favour. Instead, she said nothing.

“Without her, we would not be here,” Elrond said quietly. “We would not know of the danger in the Southlands. Without her companion, we would not even have the rings.”

Gil-galad looked sour, mostly because he must have known that Elrond had a point. “Tell me Galadriel, are you to mount a counter-attack then? On this Adar and his brood of orcs in the Southlands?”

“If that is your orders, my king,” Galadriel replied dutifully.

“I was under the impression that my orders had no great sway over you any longer.”

“Forgive me,” she said mechanically.

“Tell me then, Commander,” Gil-galad continued. “How would you proceed?”

“We promised aid to the people in the Southlands," she said as she was bid. "Many of them have already been displaced, more of them will follow. They need shelter and a new, safe place to settle. Lord Hal-“, Galadriel’s mouth suddenly dried up and she had to fight to finish her sentence. “Lord Halbrand is the heir to the Southern Throne, we can rally the people behind him. But theirs is a foe they have no hope to defeat by themselves. Let alone if the orcs will now only grow in numbers in the shelter of the flaming mountain, under the cover of darkness. Númenor has promised to return but without the Elves, they will all be lost.”

“And Sauron?” Gil-galad asked and Galadriel’s jaw clenched shut on its own accord. “Do you plan to continue your rabid search for the creature?”

“I am focused on the task at hand,” Galadriel said and willed herself to sound casual, taking a page out of Halbrand’s book of tricks. “I do not know if he is still even here. I have been searching for darkness and I found it. Adar is the one we must now focus on. If Sauron is still alive, I have no doubt he will make himself known. But I must admit that at this point, it is unlikely.”

This did the trick, it seemed. As soon as Gil-galad heard the words that suggested Galadriel had been wrong and he had been right about Sauron, he was appeased, like so many men tended to be. It killed her to leave it at that because Sauron was standing literally two feet beside her – but it was his trial, so she said nothing and bore the “I told you so”-look Gil-galad bestowed upon her in silence.

“Then I should think it is a good idea as any,” Gil-galad declared. “For the time being, Commander Galadriel will bear the second of the Rings of Power.”

Celibrimbor smiled and Galadriel could practically feel Halbrand vibrate with triumph beside her. As Nenya was placed on her finger, Galadriel could still feel its power, even though she knew it was not real, only a figment of her own design.

“I shall return Lord Halbrand to his people,” she told the king, once the sense of ceremony of it all passed. “We will ride tonight, alone. I will send an emissary with news of our location, our demand for troops and the latest movements of the enemy.”

“Very well,” Gil-galad nodded and then turned to Halbrand. “My lord, I offer you our deepest gratitude and hand in friendship. May our two peoples aid each other in the perilous days to come.”

“Thank you,” Halbrand said with a dignified bow as he shook the offered hand and then Galadriel could feel his eyes on herself, rather than on the king as he added: “The Elves will always have a friend in me, if they wish it.”

***

Galadriel was loath to leave Halbrand to his own devices, figured that having left him alone with Celibrimbor to brood on her own on the balcony had not been a minute wasted for his scheming either. He had brought this whole thing in motion, her getting the second ring. He must have whispered just the right words to make Celibrimbor think it had been his own idea to pass that power onto her.

She looked down at her hand where Nenya sat, sparkling and oh so pretty. Sauron had promised her a ring and there it was. And she had left him alone to get ready for their journey so she could do the same. Everything else would have caused suspicions. Not so much from Halbrand because she wagered he knew she would be watching him like a hawk going forth, but with her own kind.

She sighed and continued stuffing her saddle bag with more force than necessary, packing a few gowns but mostly shifts to wear under her armour because she was rather sure there would be greater need of them than her pretty dresses. She clasped it shut, when Elrond made himself known by a gentle knock at her chamber door.

“It pains me to see you leave so soon,” he said as she turned to face him. “But then we could never keep you too long in one place when there was an enemy to slay.”

“I am a warrior after all,” she replied evenly. “I must go where the battle awaits me.”

“Be careful, Galadriel,” he warned. “So far no one knows what you carry with you – but word will travel eventually and you will be in danger.”

“Aren’t I always?”, she quipped but there was no mirth to it.

“You seem… troubled,” he mused and took a step forward, looking inquisitive. “All day you have been preoccupied. Is something the matter?”

Galadriel wished so much to confide in her friend, had half a mind to change the world around them so he could know – of Sauron, of the trial, of everything that had happened and of how none of this was real. But she feared that any change that was not absolutely necessary would jeopardize this last, this most fateful trial. She could not risk it, not for something so neglectable as her own comfort. She had to bear this fate alone.

“I feel like I am at once at the end of one journey and the beginning of a new one,” she said instead. “I have been searching for Sauron so long and now that I… now that I must concede that he is likely gone and succeeded by another, I feel hollow.”

“Because you never got to avenge your brother,” Elrond said and it was a statement of fact. He did not need to hear her confirm it. “Revenge is a strong fuel, powerful at times when nothing else will keep one going. But it does not warm you when the world gets cold. - Let it go. And focus on what is right to do next.”

She nodded. And wished he knew. Everything.

“That King of the Southlands,” Elrond said when she had been quiet for a moment and she perked up, instantly alerted at her friend’s tone. “He seems very partial to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Galadriel,” Elrond tilted his head at her as his eyebrows lifted, “you know the effect you have, you must. Especially on humans. He is enamored with you. – Just… be careful to not encourage any inklings of something else between you. You know it cannot be.”

“I think you are living proof that it can,” Galadriel retorted before she could stop herself, though she supposed it was not a bad reply.

Let him think that any and everything she might have pictured between her and Halbrand before that day, before all those days before she knew who he truly was, in the dark of night in the privacy of her own bed, was impossible because he was a human. Let him think that she should be warned off encouraging his affections because she was superior to him and unions between humans and elves were as good as forbidden. Though it did beg a little humour that Elrond looked and sounded like he was worried also for Halbrand’s sake.

He was afraid Galadriel could hurt the Dark Lord Sauron’s feelings.

“And I will always be an outcast for it among our kin,” Elrond said solemnly. “Just be careful he does not misread your goodness for something different.”

“There is nothing further from my mind, I can promise you that, Elrond,” she said, and this was almost completely true. “Thank you for coming to say goodbye. Be well, my friend. Until we meet again.”

“Let it not be too long this time,” he nodded, walked over to her and pressed a quick kiss onto the crown of her head. “Namárië, Galadriel.”

“Namàrië,” she repeated. And left him behind.

***

Halbrand was already waiting for her in the courtyard, his horse readied and awaiting command. He watched her quietly attach her saddle bag and then mounted his steed at the same time she did hers. No one came to see them off, they were all too busy with their own affairs. Galadriel was glad for it. At least with Halbrand she did not have to pretend that everything was normal.

“Do you wish for me to spirit us forth a little faster?”, he asked. “I have ways.”

“I have no doubt. But I prefer the road,” she answered brusquely, and he chuckled.

“I expected you would.”

Then Galadriel gave her horse the spurs and rode ahead of him. She was well aware he would have no trouble keeping up.

***

They could have ridden for a night and a day without rest, the both of them, but Galadriel found herself unwilling to reach their destination any sooner than needed, so she declared shortly after the sun sank beyond Misty Mountains which they passed to their left, that she wished to make camp for the night.

“If we ride a little further through the forest, we can sleep in actual beds at an inn,” Halbrand suggested but Galadriel was having none of it.

“You do not deserve a real bed,” she said. “We will make camp in the woods.”

Then and there, she stopped her horse and dismounted in one swift movement. Halbrand’s horse trodded on for a few paces but then Halbrand turned the animal around and had it carry him back to her.

“I am glad to see your lively spirit restored,” he mused as he too, hoisted himself off of his horse’s back. “I had begun to suspect you were afraid of me.”

“I am not afraid,” she spat and began gathering what she needed from her saddle bag to fashion a makeshift tent.

“I do not want you to be,” he said and approached her – as she kept track of every little movement from the corner of her eye, rather countering her own declaration of not being afraid. “I wish you no harm.”

“You only wished to deceive me and my people,” she argued. “And rope me into your devious plans through extortion. I am sure you are exalted upon your cunning feat.”

“May I remind you, that I very much wanted to remain in Númenor?”

“Or maybe that was all a ploy?” She whipped around to him and blindly hit a nail into a free to hold up the fabric of her tent covering. It went in like butter. “How do you expect me to believe this was not entirely your doing?”

“Galadriel, do you truly believe I somehow arranged the fates and the very waters of the seas and your own mind for us to meet in the middle of the ocean, so you could take me to Númenor and then drag me back here by my bootstraps?”

“Perhaps?” She was all but yelling in her frustration.

“You give me too much credit.” He eyed her, then picked up the edges of the fabric one by one, took nails from where she had lain them on the ground and pressed them into the earth with his bare hand. “I may be cunning but not even I could have foreseen that. I told you, it was something far larger that brought us together. A bigger purpose.”

“I do not believe you.”

“That fact has sunken in,” he sighed, as if he actually had the gall to be exasperated with her. “But you’ll have to if we are to work together. If we are to bind ourselves to one another.”

She looked over at him as she started picking out dry branches from their surroundings to build a fire and wondered if the suggestion in his voice was real, one of his tricks or just a figment of her own imagination.

If the Maiar who walk upon Middle Earth covet or beget, if they use their bodies to eat and drink or experience carnal pleasures, worse if they sire children, they lose much of their power, she recalled. Surely, he would not risk it. Though he had brought it up himself. In that dungeon where she saw him again after millennia, which now too felt like it was years ago. There, he had said himself: I was ready to give all I had to you, Galadriel, body, power and soul.

It made no matter. Maybe he was sincere, maybe she did not imagine the innuendo in his voice – that did not change the fact that she would never lie with him. Not ever. Not even to make him weak. She might have considered it longer if this was real, if there was really a chance to change what had happened. But as it was not, she would rather perish on the spot than let him touch her. She decided to tell him exactly this, just so he understood her well and clearly.

“I will never be your concubine, if that is your desire,” she snapped. “Or whatever you think I meant when I took your hand. I could never love you.”

He stilled. And looked hurt. But only for a second. Then, his nonchalant mask was right back in place, betraying no emotion.

“How about trying to understand me, then?”, he suggested and put his hand over the branches she had gathered, where a flame sprang to light on its own.

Then he sat down and looked mighty proud of the fire he had created, like he expected her to applaud. Galadriel frowned and eyed him warily. But it could not be helped. She sat down as well and squared her jaw. They stared at each other for a long moment until she huffed in frustration.

“Well, go ahead if you must; explain yourself!”

Chapter Text

CHAPTER FIVE: A HOLLOW OATH

The sky darkened overhead as the fire crackled, painting Galadriel’s features a soft, flickering gold. It was bizarre in every conceivable way how Halbrand sat across from her and started telling the tale of his life as if he was a kindly uncle, regaling the children with a bedtime story. He talked slowly, softly, mesmerizingly, and she had to remind herself periodically that she needed to take every syllable he uttered with caution. He weaved a tale expertly and maybe it was all fiction. Or maybe it was the story he told himself to live with it all – but that was assuming he had something like a conscience.

“In the beginning, when there was little else,” he began, “there was a spirit. He was created by Eru and given a form, put together perfectly to serve. He became student and servant of Aulë, the great smith, and did whatever he was bid, designed to please and satisfy his masters. He was nothing more than that at first, a slave in anything but name, for they called him Mairon. He was powerful, yes, but with no sense of his own agency, of his own purpose. His greatest desire was only to please. He spent endless time striving for perfection. Only it would seem that he was doomed to fall short at every turn.”

“At first, he did not understand what he was doing wrong and blamed himself, tried to do better, to satisfy and anticipate any whim of his masters. But eventually he became aware that it was not him who failed, it was his masters who were never happy with him, who seemed incapable of being pleased. The were not happy with any of the others like him either, those created to serve. The masters never had any reason to treat their servants with great affection or respect, that was not what they were for. They were… machines – and if they did not do exactly as the masters wanted, as they expected them to know without instruction, they would punish them. So, while the servant grew frustrated, he made more and more mistakes, lost his abilities, barely recalled his own name. He lost his faith and wherever he turned, he was met with disdain.”

Halbrand turned away from Galadriel and looked at the flames between them instead. He seemed younger then, eons younger than his years. Looked every bit the part of an unloved child who had not known better.

“Until there was another, a master that did not belong to the other masters. A dark one that was meant to be shirked. A being created so that all the others could be free of flaws. Yet this dark one, he showed the servant affection. He offered a hand in support, he saw the potential, the will to greatness in that servant – and he lifted him above his station. He who was evil, was good to the servant. And because those who were good, had never loved him, the servant turned towards the open arms of the demon.”

“And the demon had his own great design in mind. His name was Melkor and he had his sights set on his own realm. He brought the servant along and the servant did as he was told, like he was created to. The servant saw much horror in that new realm, he committed atrocities himself. It took a while until he understood what pain was and how much of it, he inflicted. He had his doubts, but Melkor would not allow weakness – or compassion. As the servant tried to find his own path, his dark master showed his incredible viciousness also to him. If the servant even so much as thought of qualms about their deeds, his master put great suffering upon him.”

“And then his master was defeated, and Mairon was Sauron and he had nowhere to turn. He was told to go to Aman and be judged for his crimes, but he was scared and alone and with his mind still clouded by Melkor’s influence, he ran, and he hid, claimed another form and lived among men until he was found by an elf.”

Halbrand fell silent – and Galadriel had a hard time keeping her features under control. She wanted to rip into him but forced her voice to be steady and calm as well as she could.

“This shall be your defense then? You were a hapless victim of circumstance?”

Halbrand just shrugged – and Galadriel was disgusted.

“And my brother? All the others you killed?”

“It was war, Galadriel,” he said softly. “How many have you killed?”

“That is not the same,” she snapped. “I was fighting for good; I was casting out the darkness.”

“And I was part of the shadow, indistinguishable from it, even to myself,” he argued. “I could not have stopped it if I had wanted to – and I did not get to want anything.”

“Yet you had every chance to make up for what you did after.” She glared at him. “But you ran, like a craven weakling.”

“I was prepared to rectify that,” he said evenly, though she could tell from the vein throbbing on his forehead that she was vexing him. “What do you think I was doing there on the ocean when you found me, so close to the veil? Where do you think I meant to go?”

“I’ve heard that before,” Galadriel scoffed, and he gave her a funny look just when she caught herself. This Halbrand did not know that she had already heard this, he did not know that Sauron in his dungeon had claimed much the same thing. So, Galadriel hurried to cover her tracks. “From other liars – claiming they were just about to repent when something averted their course.”

“I am not a liar,” Halbrand said vehemently, and she shot him a dirty look. “At least not to you, never to you.”

“Then come back to Aman with me right now,” she challenged him. “If you claim repentance, we can go tonight.”

He squared his jaw, his face darkening with reluctance. “I can repent here. I can rectify what I have destroyed, right where I have destroyed it.”

“Just as I have suspected,” she snickered. “You remain a coward.”

Halbrand stood up in an angry huff, the frustration at being challenged, at being called out thusly, radiating off him like a dangerous current, like he was a burning fuse, ready to explode. It was dangerous to taunt him – but Galadriel did not care. This was not real, and she would not redeem him by coddling his sensibilities. If her arguing with him was enough to tip him over into a homicidal rage, there was no chance for that anyway.

“I am NOT!” he fumed. “But what good would it do to waste away in a dungeon while Middle Earth is left to its own devices. Aman does not care about this place. The Valar do not care.”

“But you do?!” Galadriel stood up as well, hovered close to the fire and fought the urge to lay a hand on him. “You said it yourself you only seek to rule – and you’ll rule over rubble if you continue down this path!”

“Unlike the elves who seek to rule and provide only for their own kind,” he spat back in her face. “And rule over their lush forests while the rest of Middle Earth is threatened by shadows. Why, if not for their selfishness would they have cast out the one among them, who did not cease to root out the evil in the lands? The elves only care about themselves, just the same as the Valar.”

“We have aided all the peoples of this world, we bled and died for them!” She rounded the fire pit, propelled forward by her own rage.

“Only to secure your own sovereignty! What do the elves care about the humans or the dwarves? What do they care, really, about the survival of any other than their own? You yourself determined the rings should remain in elven hands only – what is that if not a desire to hold all the power in this realm? You are exactly like me, yet you paint me as the villain!”

“I am nothing like you!” Galadriel did not even know how it happened, but she found herself suddenly face to face with him, close enough to count the freckles on his face, her cheeks flushed with fury.

“I’ve been inside your mind, Galadriel, don’t you forget it,” he hissed and leaned forward so close he went almost cross-eyed. Close enough so their noses were nearly touching. “And I was there when you promised Adar you would eradicate him and his kind from this earth and would leave none alive. You loathe me because I am you. All the parts you are too scared to touch.”

Galadriel shrieked and lunged at him, hatred scourging through her, not just at his words but at her circumstance, at the outrage of it all; that she should bear any of this. All his depravity – and then be told she was the same!

She meant to topple him over and scratch his stolen face off, but he was quick and darted out of the way. Galadriel felt the power of the ring she wore sizzle through her veins and drew from it, felt herself glow with it, and attacked him again. Halbrand parried, took her aggression without going on the offense himself and she growled. She drew upon the ring more, felt the edges of herself diffuse, and for a split second she thought she really was light herself, his features seemed lit up by her proximity – but then she got the upper hand on him and tossed him to the ground.

“Tell me again how you are any different from me,” he said, just as she was about to serve him another blow – and it shook her out of her stupor.

“Are you done?” He asked as she stumbled backwards, away from him. She said nothing.

He dexterously jumped off from the ground and dusted off his clothes, looking like her assault had not bothered him in the slightest, a mere inconvenience at best, and then sat down again calmly. As if nothing had even happened.

“I am not going back to Aman,” he said matter-of-factly, in much the same casual style, as she could barely catch her breath over what had transpired. “You have shown me that I am of more use here. I know that I can fix this if you are by my side. – I don’t fault you for your anger; I have made my mistakes, as have you. I think I shall have need of your hatred of me to remind me what I am here to do. But we shall fail if you chose to mistrust me and my intentions at every turn.”

Galadriel swallowed hard and did not know what to do with herself. She sank down to the spot where she had sat before and did not know what to say.

“You said there was no penance for the evil I have done and I am not crawling before my slavers to beg for forgiveness either – so what would you have me do instead? What would ease your doubts in me, Commander? Should I beg for your forgiveness? Or will you have my oath of fealty?”

This made Galadriel perk up and he immediately registered her curiosity.

“You asked me to bind myself to you, when we first met,” he said softly. “That is still my intent. I have no qualms saying the words.”

“What would you even swear to?” Galadriel asked, feeling tired down to her bones. “What has any meaning to you at all in this world that could make it an oath worth upholding? You have nothing you treasure above power and that is something you will not part with, not even for me.”

“How can you be so certain of that?”

“Because I know you, too,” she told him and could not keep the sadness out of her voice. “Because I know what you are capable of, and I can perceive no future in which you don’t cast aside all reason to assert yourself. To place yourself at the seat of ultimate power.”

“Then it seems that we are at an impasse,” Halbrand said.

“It does seem that way.” Silence fell between them, and Galadriel had no more patience for him left in herself. “It is late, and I am tired. I will go to sleep. I’ll trust you not to murder me in the night.”

“I was not the one picking a fight,” he reminded her, his smirk firmly back in place as if nothing had even happened, but it did not endear him to her one bit.

She ignored him and just got up instead, retreating to the makeshift tent and rolled out the mat she had placed there before. Halbrand sat out by the fire, like a guard. Or a jailor. It did not matter; she could not escape him either way. He had no oath to swear to her – but they were tied together all the same.

***

Sleep was an odd thing in that reality of Galadriel’s own making. It did not feel like time passed at all. She was aware of the rest she had had, felt the minutes tick away that she sought sleep and felt the moments were consciousness returned to her. She saw the light from behind her closed eyelids, but she did not dream, did not experience the stretch of night. She had simply drifted off and the next second she was back.

She took a deep breath, eyes closed, and breathed in the cold scent of the morning. Dew and grass mixed in with the smell of cold embers… and something else. Something sweet and musky. Alluring. She sniffed for it, unaware yet of much else. It was skin, she thought, it was man. She blinked and slowly the world bloomed to sharpness around her.

Then she saw him and was wide awake immediately. Halbrand lay right beside her, like he had on that raft when they first met, and he stared at her, unbothered by her irritation.

“What are you doing?” She asked him and propped herself up, slightly scurrying away. “Were you watching me sleep?”

“See, I do not really have to sleep,” he said easily and sat up as well. “I rested my eyes for a time and then it was all very dull. I yearned for a bit of distraction to keep me occupied. And you are quite beautiful when you don’t try to strangle me.”

“I have no need of your empty adulation,” she huffed and withdrew further as he remained perfectly still.

“Believe me, it is not empty,” he said. “I am very old, and I have never seen anyone like you. It is not hard to imagine that the Silmarils where meant to capture just a shred of your beauty.”

Galadriel scoffed. “I was a child when they were made. I was not flattered then, and I am not flattered now whenever any man feels called to comment on my looks.” And weirdly, it felt less unsettling to have him disparage the darkness in her soul than laud the beauty of her outward appearance. “Those compliments mean nothing to me, for many can fool you with a comely countenance that just hides the foulness beyond. You are proof of that.”

Halbrand smiled, a devious glint in his eye. “So, you think I’m comely.”

Galadriel groaned and got up, feeling a disconcerting sort of heat creep up her body. “Don’t start. That’s not even your real face.”

“Technically, I do not have a real face,” he told her and seemed to delight in her discomfort. “But this one is close to the one I first chose for myself. Only a little more rugged. Though still handsome, I think, would you not agree?”

“I do not care to talk about this any further,” Galadriel said and left the tent, stepping into the dim morning light, thankful for the cold breeze that hit her face and cleared some of her preoccupation.

It also chased away that sweet, earthy scent that still tingled in her nose. No thanks to Halbrand who also stepped out and stretched heartily. He was obviously greatly enjoying pestering her. She had no patience for it.

“We should be on our way now,” she said and already started to pick apart the tent, fiddling with the nail in the tree that held up the fabric. “If we ride hard, we should make it back to the Southerners encampment by nightfall.”

Galadriel turned around, poised to remove the nails from the ground. Only, she had nowhere to go because Halbrand had snuck up behind her, quiet like a cat, and she would have crashed against his chest if he had not stopped her with his hands on either side of her arms. He held her steady – not painfully but so fast, she could not easily move. She was so taken off guard her body froze, so moving seemed impossible anyway.

He dipped his head down towards her and Galadriel’s throat dried up.

“I thought of an oath to swear to you,” he murmured, low and raspy. “This body… whatever I do with it for its sustenance – its propagation – is binding. Eating food, drinking drink. But pleasure, most of all. If it please you, I’d grant you the power to bind me thus.” He had the gall to almost wink. “As a show of good faith.”

“I told you already, I will not do that,” Galadriel managed to say after an embarrassingly breathless moment, with her tongue dry as dust.

“I swear that I will not move against you in any way for as long as you wish it,” Halbrand said, completely ignoring her, speaking with his suggestive double-tongue. “I swear to stand by your side and never betray you. I swear on this body. It is yours, if you so desire.”

“You know as well as I that this is a hollow promise that costs you nothing,” Galadriel remained and finally shook him off. “For it will never happen.”

He put up his hands in mock surrender. “That is on you, then, elf. – All I can do is offer.”

Galadriel huffed and turned away. It was another plain of grandeur to think she would be baited by something so pedestrian as carnal desire – and for him! He was evil! He was vile and cruel and had done horrible deeds! He could not tempt her, could not hope to!

“Let’s go, then,” she told him after he finally stepped aside to finish packing up.

And if she rode hard and ground down onto the saddle harder and faster than necessary to relieve a little bit of the tension she felt course through her body, then no one would ever know of it. Least of all Halbrand.

***

The sun stood high in the sky overhead as they finally left the woods at their back, riding across the plains right of the Ered Nimrais mountain range. They had fallen into a steady, if not brisk, gallop, so as to not exhaust the animals in the growing heat. Still, and to Galadriel’s infinite relief, they were too fast for Halbrand to talk to her. She also made sure that she always rode a ways in front of him, so she would not hear him, even if he tried to.

That is why it took her aback, when he surpassed her with his horse and rode it squarely into her way, forcing her to bring her steed to a standstill.

“What is it?!” She asked him, annoyed. “We do not have time for one of your games.”

“I am not playing games,” he admonished and looked impatient himself. “I need you to listen.”

“Say it, then.”

“Follow me,” he said and steered his horse past her, back where they had just come from.

“Halbrand,” Galadriel warned.

“Galadriel!” He insisted. “Quickly!”

She cursed him under her breath but followed him to the edge of the hill they were crossing all the same. Then followed with her gaze to where he waved his hand towards a shallow riverbed at the foot of the hill. Galadriel was about to ask him once over why he was wasting their time, when she saw what he pointed to.

There lay a figure, half concealed by a beautiful brown steed with a cut at its side, drinking from the river and then nudging the lump of man beside him with its head.

“What do you see?” Halbrand asked. “Your eyes are better than mine.”

They were. Good enough to make out the face of that unconscious figure. Good enough to see the caked ashes and dried blood on his face. Good enough to see the vein at his neck quiver softly with a weakened pulse.

“Isildur,” Galadriel muttered – and wasted no time to chart a path for them to ride to the Númenorian‘s aid.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER SIX: HALBRAND’S SONG

“Careful,” Galadriel warned as Halbrand propped Isildur up against a rock. The boy’s head lulled back into his neck. He was still unconscious. “We should not move him too much. Who knows what internal damage he sustained.”

Halbrand paid her little mind, too preoccupied scanning the young Númenorian’s many injuries. “His left leg is completely crushed,” he noted. “It would be a wonder if it can be saved.”

“Should we try to get him back to Eregion?” Galadriel asked and felt Isildur’s forehead. “He is burning up.”

“I don’t think he’ll make it as far as there.” Halbrand shook his head. “I can try to get him well enough to make it to camp – but anywhere further requires power even I do not possess.”

Galadriel raised her eyes at him in question.

“I am powerful, but I am not a necromancer,” he told her, almost bemused.

“Not yet,” she muttered under her breath.

“Hm?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Take my hand,” Halbrand commanded and held his palm up to her.

“What?” Galadriel instinctively withdrew her arm.

“I am not a healer by trade,” Halbrand huffed indignantly. “I can do a little but with your power, the ring’s, and my own, it would work better. Stop being a child, Galadriel, I am not poisonous.”

“I’m not a child,” she grumbled, childishly, and gave him her hand with an eyeroll she could not fight.

Halbrand just tilted his head up at her with an impish little smirk, squeezed her fingers with his and then put his hand over where Isildur’s breeches were dark brown and caked with dry blood and ashes. His hand hovered there, and Galadriel gasped as she felt it – felt him draw from her, through her, from Nenya, connecting them all to Isildur She could almost feel, through their connection, how Halbrand operated. He drew out the pain, followed its trail. Found the anguish and the suffering like a trained hound dog – and she figured that was what he had always done. But instead of exploiting the knowledge now, he sought healing and betterment. He sought… light. But in an abstract sense. Like he did not truly know what he was grasping for.

Galadriel helped a little, frowned with a bit of strain as she cast the shadows from her own mind and thought of hope and belonging. His head snapped up to her once again, his eyes flickering with something she could not name. And he shivered as he turned his attention back to the injured mortal. It was a trickle at first that told her it was working. Bit by bit, she could feel less of the pain from Isildur, more and more of it replaced by a certain numbness. Then Halbrand groaned, as if in exhaustion, and dropped her hand. He was a little breathless when he faced her again.

“This is the best I can do at the moment,” he said, and she figured she had to trust him on that. “But we shouldn’t lose time.”

They hoisted Isildur up and carefully fastened him to his horse so he would not fall off and then they rode as fast as their steeds could sustain. They reached the Southerner’s encampment only three hours later.

***

“Commander Galadriel! And the king! They have returned!” Galadriel could hear young Theo’s voice shout over the gallop her horse from a league away and the wood-enforced gate they had built around the camp was opened for them.

Galadriel felt a short pang of guilt as she brought the false king back into the midst of the quickly gathering, exalted crowd come to greet their arrival, but she did not have time to linger on it. It was paramount to get Isildur into the healer’s tent as quickly as possible.

She dismounted before the horse had even stopped moving and was greeted by Bronwyn, who quickly understood the situation. Halbrand got back on solid ground swiftly as well and helped Galadriel carry the boy to where Bronwyn guided them, calling out commands to the people around as she charged ahead. The Southern woman hastened to free up a bed and they soon had Isil on his back, still knocked out but breathing much more steadily than when they had found him.

“Where did you…?” Bronwyn asked, dipping a clean washcloth into a basin. “We thought he was dead.”

“He very nearly was,” Galadriel said. “We found him half a day’s ride away by a riverbed. His horse must have carried him there.”

“Can you save him?” Halbrand asked and he sounded so sincerely concerned, Galadriel almost believed he truly cared.

“He appears stable,” Bronwyn mused. “More than he would have any right to be after how long he has been missing. But his leg looks bad. We will try to save it, but I don’t know…” She looked around the busy tent until she saw whom she was looking for. “Arild! Can you take over?”

Another woman, a stout, pretty one with hair as dark as her skin, hurried to them and needed not to be told what to do. She got to work on the boy right away.

“I will be right back,” Bronwyn told her and then gestured for Galadriel and Halbrand to follow her outside. Theo met them there, a youthful, endearing bounce in his step.

“We cleared a tent, mother,” he told Bronwyn, not taking his eyes off of Galadriel. “Over there.”

They walked past a row of crowded dwellings, occasionally someone would shout a welcome to their new king and the elven commander, and finally, Theo proudly presented a small but still rather spacious tent. There were two non-decrepit cots placed on opposite sides, separated by a flimsy, colourful fabric, which looked almost like a scarf.

“I thought… for privacy,” Theo said, waving towards the substitute divider.

Bronwyn crinkled her nose as if displeased by the implications of impropriety, putting up a female elf with a human man. “Or we can see if we can find you somewhere else to sleep. I could give up my—”

“No, this will do,” Galadriel said, because she rather wanted to have Halbrand close to keep watch over him, in a fashion anyway. “We will make do. Thank you for providing this.”

“Well, he is our king, and you are our savior, so…,” Theo trailed off after a warning glance from his mother.

“Speak properly, please,” she whispered to him.

“You are most welcome, Lady Galadriel and Lord Halbrand,” Theo said dutifully and curtsied in an awkward manner. “Thank you kindly for returning to us.”

“I don’t think there is need for the honorific among the few of us. Is there, son?” Halbrand said easily and winked, which made Theo turn to his mother and give her a look, as if she was really slow.

“See?!” He shrugged and Bronwyn looked stern and then shooed him off.

“Back to your kitchen duty, now,” she said.

Once the youth had left them, she turned back to Galadriel and Halbrand, smiling politely. “I’ll have baths drawn up for you, I am sure your journey was tiresome. – Commander Galadriel. My king.”

She began to make obeisance as well but Halbrand stopped her on her way down with a light hand on her shoulder.

“Really, there is no need for this deference,” he told her softly, all humble charm and gallant bashfulness. “Save it for when I have proven myself worthy of it.”

“Yes, my lord,” Bronwyn nodded – and looked pleased in a way that made something ugly twist in the pit of Galadriel’s stomach, in a way she did not wish to interrogate.

“Thank you. I’ll have someone collect you once your baths are ready.”

Then at last, they were left alone again, and Galadriel could feel the weight of pretending that everything was as it had been before, lifting off her like a boulder. She sighed loudly and dipped behind the divider to fumble with the straps of her breastplate. She had opted for light armour over a thick woolen dress and was now glad to be free of it. She could smell herself and after having ridden so fast and hard, Galadriel must have reeked as bad as any elf could. For some ungodly reason, she turned around to see if Halbrand was watching, if he could maybe smell her too and make a face of disgust – but he was busy setting down the pouch he had fastened around his waist before.

“You sound relieved,” he said, not looking at her. Though he must have felt her watching him. “Am I right to believe you will not let me out of your sight then from now on, Galadriel? Or is there another reason why you decided to endure rooming with me? Other than to guard me like a watch dog?”

Again, with the innuendo. Galadriel scoffed.

“I’d rather be aware if you mean to sneak off in the dead of night to commit… crimes,” she said spitefully.

“How delightfully vague and yet so decidedly hurtful,” he rebuffed in mock-offence. “Though, believe me, I could be marching a whole army of orcs into this camp and you would not hear it. You sleep like the dead.”

“Not true,” Galadriel argued reflexively, even though given the way her sleeping seemed to work in this reality, he must have probably been right.

He rasped an unseemly little chuckle and she resolved then and there to not truly go to sleep that night and instead to slyly observe every little thing he did.

***

The bath was heavenly, and Galadriel allowed herself the brief respite, knowing that Halbrand was occupied being waited on hand and foot in the next tent over, because she could hear some men talking to him as he soaked. Halbrand asked them this and that – but mostly to be filled in on what had happened in the camp while he was recuperating with the elves. He sounded every bit the part of the concerned ruler and eventually Galadriel drowned out his sweet talk because it made her sick.

When both their baths started to run cold, she heard him offer to teach the men a bit more of sword fighting and she felt no need to hurry to meet him outside. Showing off his warring skills would keep him busy for a time.

She listened to the men walk away and then slowly stood up from the tub, collecting her shift and a fresh dress from the chair she had sat them down on. She had just slipped into it when she heard Bronwyn outside, asking if she could have a moment. Galadriel nodded in affirmation and Bronwyn stepped inside with a young girl in tow.

She must have been no older than sixteen or seventeen and looked rather homely and shy. Her pale face was spotted with freckles – but even while visibly nervous, she smiled brightly then gave Galadriel a clumsy little curtsy.

“This is Swete, she is the best with hair of everyone in the whole camp,” Bronwyn told Galadriel. “And she has been begging me to ask if she could braid your hair.”

“It is really so lovely, my lady,” the girl said timidly, like a sweet little mouse.

Galadriel would have preferred to be alone, if she were honest, but she could not find it within herself to tell the girl no. She might have broken this world that she created and change the rules so nothing not directly relating to Halbrand would happen to her but upon further reflection that seemed worse than the alternative. She could do with a little distraction – and if it came in the form of a girl dying to braid her hair, she decided to take it.

***

Swete had combed Galadriel’s hair dry and had started an intricate plaited braid within a half hour and in all that time, the girl had not said a word other than occasionally marveling at Galadriel’s hair. At first it had been nice to just count the brush strokes and let her mind go as blank as it could get, given her circumstances, but eventually, she started to feel strange. Like she expected this human girl to serve her, without offering at least some conversation in return.

“Tell me, Swete,” Galadriel said thus, and she could see girl jump a bit in the mirror placed in front of them at the sudden mention of her name. “Are you from Bronwyn’s village or did you come from another?”

“Another, my lady,” she replied quietly after a moment.

“Did you come with your parents?”

“No, my lady,” she said. “Only with my two little brothers.”

Galadriel waited, sensing great sadness from the girl and was prepared to tell her she did not have to answer any further but then Swete continued.

“They came in the night. The orcs,” she began. “When we woke up, the first houses were already burning. There was so much screaming. My mother sent me to take the boys on the horse and ride for the Elven tower. She said she and my father would be right behind us. But they never came.”

“I am so sorry, Swete, truly,” Galadriel apologized. “I did not mean to reopen any freshly scabbed wounds.”

“No worries, my lady,” she smiled morosely. “We have all lost people, haven’t we? That’s just the way of the world, I figure.”

“It appears that way, does it not?” Galadriel agreed. “Well, we are still here, and we ought to make the best of it.” Galadriel lifted a hand into her hair and gingerly touched along the crown of her head, feeling the gentle ripples Swete had braided. “And maybe make beautiful things while we can, to bring some light to the world. I think this braid will be quite exquisite, will it not be?”

“Yes, I promise, my lady,” Swete nodded eagerly. “I am almost finished.”

***

The girl did end up doing an exceptional job, on par with many of the intricate styles that had been in fashion for the elves, even back in Valinor. Galadriel turned her head from side to side, tracing with her eyes how two braids on either side of her head wove around each other and apart and came together in the nape of her neck while the rest of her hair was shiny and wavy, hanging loose.

“Masterful, Swete,” Galadriel complimented, and the girl blushed. “Thank you so much.”

“You are most welcome, my lady,” she said and half-bowed. “Just call for me, should you have need of me again.”

“I will,” Galadriel promised. “Let us go now, I am sure others want to make use of this tub still today.”

They walked outside and for the few paces it took to go from the bathing tents to the courtyard at the front of the camp, Galadriel almost forgot what she was doing there. So sweet smelled the late summer air, so golden shone the setting sun, so kindly looked the people around upon her. - Until they rounded the corner and there was Halbrand, still teaching the young men of the encampment his fancy little sword tricks. Then she remembered the reason she was there.

He was twirling his sword, in a fashion much too artful to be mastered in time for any of the men to ever use it properly and not get slain in the process, when he caught her eye. He finished the movement, though less finessed than he surely could have – and paused. Halbrand brought a hand up to his own hair that fell into his forehead, wavy from having dried in the open air, and moved it downwards, as if he was doing it to hers. He made an appreciative face all through that, a compliment without so many words, from afar. Galadriel smiled, though it cost her – but she could not risk anybody looking on and suspecting animosity between them. That would only lead to complication.

She quickly turned away, and soon was roped in by Bronwyn to tend to Isildur for a time, who was still lost to the world, but recovering nicely. At least that was, what Bronwyn said.

***

When Galadriel emerged, it was dusk, and night would quickly fall. In the courtyard, the Southerners had lit a big fire where they roasted wild boars, a meager catch of fish of the day and some mushrooms that could be salvaged from the forest nearby. They opened a fresh barrel of Númenorian mead in celebration of their king’s return. And now that Galadriel knew to look for it, she could tell Halbrand never really drank from his cup, he just pretended to, and would periodically let a bit of it trickle out so he could get a refill after an appropriate time.

Galadriel had no interest in being a part of this twisted festivity, but Bronwyn asked her to sit with her, Theo and Swete by the fire, and to decline the offer would have been rude. They sat down just in time to bear witness to Halbrand playing coy when one of his enamored sword fighting students begged him to sing a song for them.

Galadriel knew he would sing, would not pass up the opportunity. Maybe Halbrand wouldn’t have, gruff and serious as he could be. But Sauron, who was boisterous, who wanted to be admired, and who was literally famed for singing songs that swayed even some Gods away from the music of Eru, he would sing.

“Fine, fine, I will sing for you,” he declared and inclined his head with a charming smile. “Should it be a war song? Or one about a rowdy tavern brawl? Or maybe a love song?”

Galadriel heard Swete half-choke on a sip of Meade beside her. The girl’s entire body was vibrating with poorly hidden excitement and a curiosity that could only belong to the yearning and untouched young woman within. And she was far from the only one thus affected by Halbrand’s wiles.

“Oh, please,” Galadriel muttered disparagingly, but only to herself.

“Sing us a song of our homeland,” Theo called out. “Please my lord!”

Halbrand heard him and nodded. “A song about the Southlands then. Very well.”

Without another command, upon the first note he sang, the entire camp fell silent. It was eerie. Even the babies in their mother’s arm stopped crying, all to listen – and Galadriel hated herself for understanding why. His voice was beautiful. In an ethereal way. Unreal, like something from far away, yet still so intimate, so immediate. It felt like a fist reaching into her very body and clamping around her heart. She was so taken aback that it took her a moment to grasp the meaning of the words.

The first verse talked about fertile grounds and kind summers, about trees with deep roots and slumbering mountains. Then the chorus came, and Galadriel realized she had never heard this song before. But around her, the people started to hum along. The second verse spoke about the people of the South, about loyalty and love of kin. And then another chorus followed. Now a few people around the fire began to sing along with Halbrand.

Count thee on me

From mountains to sea

Safe may we be in our bonds

That the ground of our fathers

Be the lands of our sons

Count thee on me

Far as the eye can see

Safe may we be in our bonds

And the ground of our fathers

Is the land of our sons.

He sang the chorus twice, then thrice over, and by the end, nearly everyone was singing it with him. Galadriel looked between Theo and Swete who sat on either side of her – Theo’s eyes were wet while Swete was openly sobbing – and she was not alone. On the other side, flanking Halbrand and looking up at him in reverence, the men he had taught earlier were singing loud enough to almost drown him out. And Galadriel understood at once what she had never quite before, even with having seen twice over that he was capable of this; he had made them love him! Within a few hours he had won them all over!

She understood this only now because he never had. Through his eyes, from over his shoulder, the adoration felt like a cold hard consequence of his deception. No more real than his manipulation had been. But Galadriel understood, because now she was there, seeing it from the other side. There could be nothing more sincere. He might not mean it, but they did. They loved him. And it had nary been a day!

She remembered then, those little flicks of terror that licked at her in the darkest corner of her mind to where she had banished them long long ago. She did not even want to put a name to it – but she recognized the feeling. Two lifetimes ago, she had felt it too. Before she found out the truth. For centuries she had buried that deep inside and built over it with hate and anger and righteousness. But she knew with a start that beneath it all, was a wound. It was hurt. She knew he had broken her heart.

Halbrand finished the song and for a moment after, everyone held their breaths – and then erupted into cheers that held on a long good while. Long enough for Galadriel to school her features back into the unreadable mask she had worn since they had reached the camp. She clapped politely and nodded with a smile when Bronwyn commented on what a wonderful voice Lord Halbrand had.

“A beautiful song,” one of the older men around the circle said, raising his voice above the murmurs. “I thought I almost remembered it, but I do not think I recall it.”

“Ah, I do not believe you could,” Halbrand said easily. “I heard it only once when I was a small child. From my grandfather, just before he passed. He kept it like a secret, said it had great meaning and power, that song. I only understood later what it meant, when I found out who I was, who my family was. But I say we should not keep it like a secret any longer, would you not agree? I say we should keep it as an oath!”

“Hear! Hear!” The old man bellowed, and a few more repeated it. Some clapped.

Then one of the sword fighters yelled: “The ground of our fathers!”

And the other young men chimed in: “Is the land of our sons!”

Then Bronwyn stood up, raising her cup, beaming with pride. “The ground of our mothers, the land of our daughters!”

Then the men rose, too: “The ground of our fathers is the land of our sons!”

“The ground of our mothers, the land of our daughters!” The women echoed.

And so on and so on, together they chanted. And Galadriel did not even feel herself move at first. She needed to get away from this.

Whatever had she done? What madness had she put upon them bringing Halbrand back to them? He would lead them all to ruin! She half-stumbled, half-ran from the fire. No one even noticed her, too entranced by their new rallying cry.

She did not see that he saw, did not know he said something polite and companionable to his new acolytes, something about having to confer with his elven commander, and then stole away to go after her. She did not even hear him follow her back in the direction of their tent, beyond the blood rushing past her ears.

This is not real, she told herself frantically. This is not how it happened.

Then a twig broke under his foot, and finally she became aware of him. She threw him a look and did not stop walking. He kept up with no great effort.

“Should you not be back there, enjoying this?” She tried so hard not to let him know how deeply terrified she was. Of him, of them, of all of it.

“And let my jailor return to no prisoner to guard? – Never.” He sounded so callous, so casual, like he had no sense of what had just happened.

She wondered if he indeed did not understand – or understand yet at this time – what power he held, how much more dangerous this was than simply believing he had the power to trick or scare people into loyalty.

How lethal and terrifying he could be if he bound people in honest and bare love. She recalled with a start something she herself had said once. That time when she almost closed her fist around the One Ring. What she would become. All shall love me and despair. – All could love him just the same. Maybe he was right. Maybe, they truly were not so different, him and her. This was the most terrifying thought of them all.

“Are you not my jailor, way more than I am yours?” She said, mostly to distract him.

Let him know that she felt bound against her will to him so that he not dwell on the fact that he had a camp of men at his back, willing to bind themselves to him in a heartbeat, out of their own full volition, and with passionate fervor after just a song.

“Ha. – Yes, I think we are both jailors to each other,” he mused but she barely heard him.

“The song,” she said, her mind having caught on the thought.

“What about it?” Something in his voice made her turn to look at his face again; the edges of his mouth were shivering with his effort to keep them from splitting upward into a grin.

“You made it up.” It wasn’t a question. “Just now.”

“Every word,” he confirmed and seemed like a little boy who had stolen forbidden sweet things from the kitchens.

He was so proud of himself that it would be endearing if it wasn’t so absolutely blood-curdling. And if he truly did not know, it needed to stay that way for as long as possible.

She quickened her step.

“Oh, come on,” he sighed. “What was I supposed to do? They put me on the spot. – I have not sung a song in hundreds of years. They were hardly singing times.”

“And you say you do not lie,” she scoffed and shoved through the entrance of the tent and before she could do anything else, the oil lamps flickered to light all over. His doing, of course.

“It was only to give them a little hope,” he said softly. “What is the harm in that?”

She would not tell him. But he looked at her like he wanted something, like he was going to pry, so she did the only thing she could think of to do, to distract him well enough to cast out any other thought. Flattery.

“You have a beautiful voice,” she told him and hoped he did not hear how flat it was.

Not that it was not true, but it was of little significance. He inclined his head all the same, smiled a little. And she knew she had him.

“Would you have of me a lullaby, my lady?” He offered, obviously moved by her compliment to something akin to… playfulness, apparently, was it? “I could make up another song.”

“I think I have had enough music for one night,” she told him and some of his elation diminished, but was swiftly replaced with curiosity, as she moved to rip down the privacy curtain from between their two sides of the tent.

He tilted his head at her in question. “’This so I don’t bring the orcs into camp?”

“You know, I wish you would stop joking so much,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because it unsettles me,” she told him flat out, stepped out of her shoes and lay down on her cot.

“What, so I deserve neither a bed, nor just a little humour – not even a speck?!”

“I am going to sleep.”

“Then I shall be off to collect the orcs.”

“I despise you.”

“Goodnight, Galadriel,” he chuckled and she heard him climb into his cot as well.

She did not say it back.

Instead, she pretended to fall asleep fast, and he must have believed her, because he extinguished the lamps with a flick of his wrists. She kept watch over him from behind her lashes, her eyelids just ever so slightly parted.

She watched him watch the ceiling for a bit, then grab an apple from a bowl of fruits from the bedside table and then watched him thrust it up into the air and catch it again. And again. And again.

He did nothing else for what must have been hours. Just tossed and caught and tossed and caught and tossed and caught the apple. It was so steady, so mindlessly repetitive, that Galadriel had trouble following the movements. Had trouble staying awake, actually. And then, without her really knowing it, from one blink to another, she fell asleep.

Then, right after, it was morning, and he was looking at her from his cot.

“And thus, Lady Galadriel awakens, and returns from the dead,” he lauded.

“Cease watching me sleep,” she admonished.

“If you cease watching me while you are pretending to sleep,” he deadpanned, and though she was still tired, she was not too tired to argue with him – only she did not get to.

For Bronwyn called out their names as she let herself into their tent. “Come quick, Isildur is awake!”

Chapter Text

CHAPTER SEVEN: SAURON'S PLEA

Since Galadriel and Halbrand both had slept in their clothing, they wasted no time following Bronwyn out to the healer’s tent, where Arild was in the process of changing Isildur’s dressings.

“Arild is a miracle worker,” Browyn told them as they crossed the dimly lit space. “She saved his leg.”

“Though he will not be able to use it for a while,” Arild informed them, not taking her eyes off of her patient. “If he ever regains full use of it. He will have to remain in a wheelchair for a time.”

Isildur looked glum but he tried to sit up as well as he could when Galadriel and Halbrand arrived at the foot of his bed.

“Commander Galadriel, Lord Halbrand,” he addressed them, schooling his features into a smile that did not quite mask the turmoil behind it. “I am told I have you to thank for my survival.”

“More your horse,” Halbrand corrected. “We were just lucky we came across your path.”

“No, I was lucky,” Isildur said. “Or something like that at least.”

“Tell them what happened to you,” Bronwyn encouraged him gently and then turned to them both. “You are going to want to hear this.”

“I was crushed under the rubble of a house in the village, and when I came to, the orcs had returned with the Uruk and his human underling.”

“Waldreg.” Bronwyn spat out the man’s name like it was bile. “That traitor.”

“They did not become aware of me,” Isildur continued, "but I could hear them talking. – I waited for a day until they left and then I managed to pull myself free. I could not walk well and it was so dark. I don’t know how long I went through the woods, neither where I was headed. Then my horse found me. The rest of it is a blur. I don’t think I had a drop of water in days.”

“Food and drink is on the way, my lord,” Arild said kindly. “Though you must pace yourself. Reintroducing solids, even drink, will be a process.”

“The orcs, and their master,” Galadriel said, “did they make any mention of where they were headed?”

“They talked about going back to replenish their losses, they said,” Isildur answered. “Though it was a new place, one I have not heard of before, so I cannot tell you where they went. – Mordor, they called it.”

Galadriel squared her jaw. Beside her, Halbrand gave no indication the name meant anything to him at all.

“It is not a new place,” she told Isildur. “Mordor is Elven-Tongue. It means Dark Land. – They are returning to the mountain.”

“Where Adar will undoubtedly make more orcs,” Halbrand said forebodingly, though he did not seem overly perturbed by the notion.

“He will come back for us, won’t he?” Bronwyn asked worriedly, her forehead in deep wrinkles.

“He will have to,” Halbrand mused. “If only to chase us away from these parts. If he means to create more of the orcs, he will need sustenance for them. Not only does their creation ravish resources, their upkeep does as well. These lands are fertile, he will want to get his hands on them. – Do you have a map of the Southlands?”

“The command tent,” Isildur piped up. “My father, he must have brought maps. Maybe he left some behind.”

“Elendil,” Galadriel said, distracted by the mention of Isildur’s father. “We must get word to him that you survived. He was devastated. We presumed you dead.”

“I do not know how to,” Isildur said sadly. “No dove with a scroll will make that journey and they left us no ships.”

“Well, Queen Miriel promised Númenor will return,” Galadriel said and nodded at Isildur reassuringly. “Your father will be back.”

“And we will need him,” Halbrand said.

“We’ll have Elven troops as well,” Galadriel promised, and touched a hand to Bronwyn’s arm. “We will not abandon you in your time of need.”

Bronwyn nodded. “Let us find you this map.”

Galadriel bowed to Isildur and was already turning to follow Bronwyn out, when something stopped her.

“You will be alright,” Halbrand said softly, and Galadriel whipped around to see him bend down towards the mortal, putting his hand gently on Isildur’s leg in a touching show of compassion. “You will walk again. I will help you however I can. Your people have need of you yet. As do mine.”

Galadriel watched the scene unfold, feeling her forehead settle into a frown, she subsequently had trouble chasing off her face. Halbrand was playing all of the angles, all of the time, but it was so tempting to believe he was sincere. He seemed so sincere.

“Thank you, my lord,” Isildur said, and Galadriel knew he bought everything Halbrand had on offer.

“Not ‘my lord’. Call me Halbrand, please,” the false king said. “I mean to be a friend to you, not just an ally.”

“Halbrand,” Isildur replied and nodded, smiling wholly.

Galadriel could practically see the tentacles of Halbrand’s so-called friendship wrap around the boy and she remembered another lifetime in a flash, one she had witnessed in the second trial.

She remembered what great capacity of love Isildur had for Halbrand; for Sauron – and could see the same path unfold for him right in front of her. And the worst thing was, Halbrand did not even know. He just roped in people left and right, just in case, collecting acolytes to use once they were convenient and then cast them to the shadows as soon as he had no more need of them.

Halbrand inclined his head one last time and then turned to follow the women. As he did, he caught Galadriel’s eye – and even if no one else in the tent could have, he saw the disgust and the accusation and the mistrust behind her eyes clear as day. He must have. The way his own features darkened momentarily as he held her gaze could have no other explanation.

“We must make haste getting our hands on those maps,” he said gruffly as he peeled his eyes off of Galadriel and then talked to Bronwyn the whole way across the camp to the commander’s tent, surely hoping to punish her with ignorance.

But she could not be punished like that. She was too busy casting out visions of a giant sinister city of men in the heart of Mordor, helmed by an obedient servant to a puppeteer with a sweet tongue and all-seeing eyes in a black tower.

Galadriel’s mind was still clouded as she followed Bronwyn and Halbrand into the tent. The woman asked one of the remaining Númenorian soldiers – one of the ones who had stayed behind to recover from their injuries, too sick then for the long boat journey home – for access to the maps. The soldier presented some to them, no questions asked, and followed Bronwyn’s request to give them some privacy in much the same unquestioning compliance. Bronwyn had respect here. She had inspired faith and held authority. If Halbrand was smart, he would keep her close-by as well. Galadriel tried to convince herself this thought made her feel antsy because she was worried for Bronwyn and for no other reason at all.

She ignored how her eyes darted to where Halbrand and Bronwyn smoothed out three maps on top of each other on the large tactical table. She decided not to chart how their fingers brushed up against one another in the process a few times. They did so thrice. But Galadriel was not keeping count.

Finally, the two had completed the assembly and stepped back, falling in line with Galadriel who already had a good vantage point on the whole picture just by merit of having stood behind. She turned her head to watch Halbrand study the map, could see the cogs in his mind turn and wondered how much of the potential of the Southlands, of Mordor, he had seen for himself before this moment.

“It would make the most sense to establish a fortress, or maybe even a city, close to Orodruin, the mountain, if you can control its temper,” he mused and stepped closer to the map again, pointing out the volcano as well as the peaks around it. “It is surrounded by mountain ranges on two sides, sheltering from outside forces, as well as view. And then you would have to only control the stretch of land we are on right now to sustain an army. And this plain is also sheltered by mountains to the further South, open only to the East.”

He hovered a hand over the middle of the map to illustrate his point.

“We are somewhere around here,” Bronwyn determined, stepping up next to him and pointing to the edge of the western mountain ridges separating the plains from the Riverland to the West. “Two days ride off of the sea of Nurnen.”

“And we should be there,” Halbrand said and pointed beyond that ridge, to the West, right at the place where Osgeliath would one day be. “This is a fishing town called Osgeende. We loaded up on supplies there ahead of our journey, before my shipmates and I ended up stranded in the Sundering Sea where you found me,” he elaborated and addressed Galadriel to her face again the first time since the healer’s tent. “The surrounding area is good for farming, you have a good view of the rest of the South, of whatever may approach from the Western mountains to the East, and if things get hairy, this mountain range at its back offers shelter.”

“So, you mean to sack this city for us? This fishing town?” Galadriel asked, careful to keep any inflection out of her voice so as to not alert Bronwyn to their difficulties.

“Well, he should not have to. The Riverlands still belong to the South. He is king of this town, just as he is of any other downstream, is he not?” Bronwyn said. “He must only claim it.”

“I can’t imagine whoever holds the city would be pleased to give it up,” Galadriel argued. “Which would mean we would have to take it by force.”

“No one said anything about force,” Halbrand insisted, and then turned to Bronwyn. “Neither do I plan on waving a banner and demanding the relinquishing of anyone’s property. – We are a people in need. We will ask them for help, and I am sure we will receive it. And if Adar means to grow his influence, whatever Southerners remain, will do best to stick together. As well you must not forget that we may be a depleted, battered motley crew, but help is on the way. Elendil and Eregion will come to our aid. We have something to offer to these people in return for their opening their gates for us.”

This was Halbrand’s way of saying “I am planning to ask nicely” – but Galadriel had no doubt he would take the town by blood if he so desired it. She could feel him watch her again and she felt he was not pleased with her. She did not care, she was not all too pleased with him either. She had half a mind to argue with him about the best course of action, but then his plan at face value had nothing wrong with it, in fact she even agreed. It was just a point of pride to not let his plans go unchallenged.

But then she did not have time to come up with a critique of it worth sharing, because next, light broke into the tent as another elf stepped into it, slightly out of breath, as if he had ran there.

“Arondir,” Bronwyn gasped and walked over to meet him, touching his chest and arms before they both inclined their heads to each other, foreheads touching. “You are back.”

Arondir allowed himself a moment of rest in Bronwyn’s grasp but then looked up to acknowledge Galadriel and Halbrand. “And so are you,” he said. “Commander. Lord Halbrand. It is good to see you restored.”

“They have brought back Isildur, Elendil’s son,” informed him Bronwyn. “He brought dark tidings from Adar.  – What have you found out when you followed them?”

“The orcs are retreating to the mountain,” Arondir replied and addressed the room, gesturing towards the map. “There are more than we thought there would be, though. Not only the ones who attacked the villages in these our parts. – A large host of them was headed to the volcano from the East, returning with mortals in chains.”

“Slaves to tend the fields,” Halbrand said glumly. “Like I suspected.”

“But that is not all,” Arondir said, and turned from Halbrand to Bronwyn. “Waldreg set out on his own, with his master’s blessing. He is rounding up old sympathizers of Morgoth and I believe he is meant to set them on our path. – We must ready everyone for travel. We can not stay here any longer.”

He stepped up to the map, gave it a cursory glance – and then pointed right at Osgeende. “We should go here. There is already a settlement there and it is a good a spot to defend as any with the mountain at the back – but still with easy access to the river, a wide view at any would-be attackers and yet not to far out of the way to claim back the South when our allies return to our side.”

There was silence for a moment. Halbrand and Bronwyn shared a look, all companionable and quietly pleased, and Galadriel had to hold back a groan with some effort.

“What is it?” Arondir asked, ever-perceptive, as Elven warriors of his rank ought to be.

“Lord Halbrand just suggested exactly the same spot,” Bronwyn said and Arondir looked impressed with the man whom he perceived as merely a mortal… and thus did not necessarily expect him to be wise about the tactical decisions of wartime.

“It was well suggested,” Arondir nodded in appreciation.

“Thank you, my friend,” Halbrand replied graciously.

He was making friends all around that day, this Lord Halbrand, the false king. Galadriel squared her jaw once more. By now her teeth hurt from grinding them together so much.

“How soon can we leave?” Arondir asked Bronwyn.

“It is still early in the day,” Bronwyn mused and then inclined her head at Halbrand. “If the king wishes, he could give the order and we could be on the road come dawn tomorrow.”

“We shall do this, then,” Halbrand nodded.

“I will have everybody assemble in the courtyard,” confirmed Bronwyn, already every bit the part of a deputy.

***

For appearances sake, Galadriel stood to Halbrand’s right as he gave the order and swore his people in for the three days and two nights travel ahead. But as he picked from the young Southern men and leftover Númenorian soldiers a designated guard for their convoy and asked them to meet him there again in an hour for more of his combat training, Galadriel took her leave.

She could have trained half of the men herself and lighten some of Halbrand’s load, the way she had back in Númenor. But Halbrand did not ask and she would not offer. She felt sick to her stomach and her head was pounding uncomfortably. She could not fully say what the separate elements of her discomfort were or what specificities had caused them. She could only name a vague unease, a certain overarching sense of doom. She could not even say, if it was for the present or the pasts that she had lived through, or for the true reality she had come from. She only knew she felt powerless to stop the doom she foresaw ahead.

Still, that was not the point, her stopping anything bad from happening here, in this trial – and reminding herself of that fact should have helped. If Halbrand was to cast them all into ruin and despair, such was the way of the trial. Only it did not help. One, because Galadriel was supposed to produce a truly redeemed Halbrand at the end of this somehow and two, because she felt it was increasingly hard to divorce herself from her own dreamscape. She cared about these people, about this world, as if it was real and reminding herself again and again that it was not, did little to dispel that care.

She had been pacing the length of her tent for nearly an hour, deeply in thought about all of this, when Halbrand finally returned to haunt her again. He strode in, some dirt on his cheek and hair, and threw his vest carelessly onto his cot. He smelled roughly – though not unpleasantly – of exertion, and his hair was a tousled mess. He must have given the newly appointed guardsmen a good training session.

“I could have used you out there,” he told her and passed her by, not looking at her a lot as he packed together what little he had brought to travel with.

She could tell he was still displeased with her.

“You did not ask me to stay,” she replied and kept her distance, watching him move about like a mouse would a cat on the prowl.

“I’m not your king, I do not rule you,” he said curtly. “As you never fail to remind me. I do not wish to order you around. I would have liked you to stay because you wanted to.”

“I had needed to be alone for a time,” Galadriel told him truthfully, because something about his dejection made her feel guilty… even it was likely just another attempt to manipulate her. “I had to think.”

“Ah, yes, I can hear you think from way over here,” Halbrand scoffed.

It was a figure of speech. She had made sure of that. In this reality, in this trial, Sauron would not manage to read her mind again past that first day. She had designed it thusly.

“What, pray tell, you think I think of, then?” She challenged, because she knew no matter what he said, he would not know for sure.

“You have been thinking all day, since this morning,” Halbrand said and set down his pouch that now held everything he had to his name that was not armour or the sack of clothes he had been given in Eregion.

She gestured at him to go ahead and tell her.

“You wonder if I am feigning compassion for Isildur. You wonder if I offer sincere friendship to these people here or if I wish to deceive them like you accuse me of wishing to deceive you. And you wonder if I will make a vicious army of this band of lost Southerners to come and cast your little Elven kingdom into shadows.”

“Can you blame me?” She asked and was surprised herself at how drained she sounded. This was all taking its toll worse than she thought, it seemed.

But not only on her, apparently, because now it was Halbrand who was pacing, radiating with deep-sinking frustrations that to his credit, he seemed to try to keep in check. Still, he did not do her the favour of keeping them all to himself.

“Do you know how exhausting this is?!” He huffed finally, indignantly. “Your unyielding suspicions of me. It appears unending, like I’m the moon, chasing the sun. It’s a constant fight. A fight on top of another fight, ever wrapped up in distrust. Every interaction with you. It is tiresome.”

Something about the way he said it, made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up in sudden anger, like she was an unruly child he had to suffer. A child who was burdensome just for the fun of it.

“Oh, excuse me, did you think this was going to be easy?” She took a couple of steps further into the space between them, ready to give him just such a fight that he spoke of. “Were you hoping I was going to be a little more convenient?! Is your repentance not as fun as you anticipated it to be?”

“I anticipated for it to feel a little less futile,” he spat, instantly matching her exact tone and demeanor. “I cannot please you at all. No matter what I do, whatever I do, you still look upon me with doubts and disdain.”

“What did you expect?! – You can’t dangle me from a cliffside and then blame me for being afraid of heights,” Galadriel shot back.

“But I am doing my best!” He stood still and spun around on the spot to gesture at her wildly, illustrating all his efforts he complained went unseen.

“As you should!” Galadriel exclaimed. “Did you think a few days play-acting as a good, kind king would absolve you of all that you have done?! This takes time!”

“I did my time, Galadriel,” and he lowered his voice to a hiss so that passers-by from outside would not pick up on his words. “Hundreds of years of it, in this body. The least you could do is take that into account. I am trying to do better. I have tried for nearly an age!”

“Yet to subject yourself to any judgement other than mine, which you cannot seem to stomach either, you refuse.” She glowered at him.

“Because you know as well as I do that there is not a speck of hope for any real fairness from any other,” he said, and started pacing again. “I just wish you would give me a proper chance instead of expecting deceit from me at every turn. A fighting chance, Galadriel, so that I may actually prove myself to you.”

“But you have not truly earned that chance of me, don’t you see? Going to Aman would have.”

And she was literally only there, only stuck in this dream with him, because after the end of it all, he had been returned to Aman.

“Why can you not let it rest?” He groaned, now in open frustration. “I will not go! Nothing awaits me there but more chains. How could I go when I got all of this, here and now? How could I go, when here I have…”

He paused, his hands grasping the air in front of his as if to illustrate grasping for the word – but he would not say it.

“What?” She urged him on, impatient with him. “What do you have here?!”

“You,” he snapped. And then puffed out a gust of air as he ran a hand through his unruly hair and looked away. “I have you.”

That took Galadriel a second to sort into that corner at the back of her mind where the things went, she did not have the immediate capacity to deal with. 

“What about honesty then?” She asked him instead of interrogating what he had said before.

“I just bared my soul to you,” he argued in complete disbelief.

“Or you meant to cloud my judgement and make me feel guilty. You paint such pretty pictures with your words. They are all just more of your songs,” Galadriel said, trying to sort through the chaos in her own mind, listing again and again what she knew of him in the real world, so as to not lose sight of what he was in his essence. What he would become. “You are a deceiver. That is your nature, and I cannot forgo knowing that just because you ask me to.”

He stared at her, stuck to a spot once more and looked ready to scream.

“If you were sincere,” she continued regardless, relentlessly. “You would acknowledge what part you played in Morgoth‘s rise to power over these lands. You would not try to endear me and make the whole world fall in love with you. You would not make a play for my pity, by claiming you were forced and beaten and coerced by your seducer and made his object with no agency of your own!” She took a step in his direction. “You might be older than me, but you forget I too have been around since before the Silmarils were made. I know you acted independently of Morgoth many, many times. You always had a choice.”

“No more than a fleck of dust of it, within an avalanche of compulsion,” he cried out. “A teaspoon to move on within an ocean of spikes.”

“Enough wiggle room to condemn my brother to his death all by yourself,” she insisted, not accepting his spiel of innocence, his song of I-was-only-following-orders. “You cannot claim servitude and wrap the mantle of blamelessness around your shoulders to shield you from consequence. That is not how redemption works.”

Halbrand was vexed. He looked like he stood on a tightrope with an abyss beneath him and if she pushed him too hard, he might fall into complete hatred and utter ruin. But she could not stop herself. Maybe she should have placated him or tried and play his game of seduction to bribe him into compliance – or weaken him as he so generously offered, enough to force him into her own designs. Then he might say the words she wanted to hear from him, or worse the ones he thought she wanted to hear from him, but they would not be true. That was not real redemption, that was a farce. And this would not save the universe.

 “Come to Aman with me. Face your trial,” she beseeched him, and maybe that was the way. Maybe that is how she could save this version of the Southlands, of Middle Earth, from him this time around. “You were on your way to, if what you said was true. Choose penance, then. At last! You were on the right path when you meant to sail to the veil.”

“That was before—” He waved his hands once more in a way to signify that many things had happened since then. “Do not make me say it again. – I would have to give all of this up. It is cruel to ask it of me!” He walked, three, four paces towards her and now he was the one beseeching her: “Do you not understand? This is the first time in my entire existence that I am free to do as I please, to ever truly chart my own path!”

She wanted to contradict him, but he took another step, then leaned forward and bent down to her and desperately grabbed her left hand in both of his, practically begging her to hear him out.

“You do not know what this means to me, you have always been free,” he pleaded. “I was born in shackles. I was created to have no mind of my own. I never wanted anything just from within me alone, not like this. I told you. I only wanted to please my masters. First the ones, then the other.”

Galadriel puffed out a breath of consternation, she did not want to hear that excuse again and he must have known it, for he cringed. – And then finally offered something she thought she could believe.

“Look, did Morgoth promise me more, did he offer me a path to be raised above my station and gave me the choice to accept him as my new master? Yes! Did I hope to have a greater part in his design? Yes, greater than under the boot of Aule, definitely. Did I, too, wish to create things, beautiful things, that could be mine alone? Yes. Did I follow the call of promise and make decisions on who to kill and how, and for what, yes! – But it was not the same. It wasn’t the same, Galadriel, you have to believe me. My will never truly belonged to me before, not fully.”

He was so close to her, it made it hard to look at him. She did not want to see his eyes. For they looked so true, so sincere, she broke herself in half trying to keep from trusting every syllable he uttered and never doubting him again. How could he be lying? How could he lie, when he looked at her like this? And how could she ever, ever trust him if she could swear that he was telling the truth when everything inside her screamed, warning her of his eternal deceptions? How was she to fulfill her task like that? How would she ever know what of him was real and what manipulation.

“My will is mine now, though,” he continued, not letting off, not letting her think. “Only mine. That is different. I know it because it feels different. You cannot ask me to give that up. It is too great a punishment.”

“And that is the ground on which you would ask of me blind faith?” Galadriel asked and she felt silly, like she was tripping over her own words.

She did not know if she had, she did not hear herself speak anymore. Her entire world had zeroed in on Halbrand and he pulled her ever closer to him, clouding her mind, her judgement.

“I would ask of you the benefit of the doubt,” he murmured, dropping his voice, getting closer still. “I told you, back in Eregion; you know me. I am your friend. – You were able to extend the possibility of grace to me before, when I was just Halbrand, when you told me to be free of the evil I had done in my past. Why can’t you extend that grace to me again?”

“Because you are not just Halbrand,” she mumbled, leaned away from him, tried to regain her faculties.

He could be a snake. Or he could be a fallen angel just begging for a way out. He could be everything at all at the exact same time. How was she to know?

“Give me a chance, Galadriel,” he whispered.

He roped a large hand securely around her waist and pulled her against him with it – though not at once, not with great dexterity. He did it so slowly, she only realized it, when she has to lift her head to keep looking at him.

“I do not know how,” she confessed, her voice more of a breath.

Halbrand made a little sound, somewhere in the back of his throat. That was the last thing Galadriel heard before blood crashed past her ears like a tidal wave. Because then he kissed her. – Or it was not even a real kiss. It was the ghost of one, over as quickly as it happened. Just a tiny, innocent little thing. Merely a fleeting brush of soft skin. But she could swear it broke off a piece of her that she would never get back.

And she could swear he sighed into the touch as it happened.

Which was how she knew, at least this was true out of all that he had said. He wanted something for himself, alright. He wanted this. He wanted her. He desired. He coveted – and that alone should make him easier to break, should she ever have to.

“I do not make hollow oaths,” he muttered, hovering impossibly close still, his back hunched to stay at her height, and she could see very little else than black; the blown-out pupils of his eyes. "I do have some honour."

She had no more words to give to him, he had rendered her completely mute.

“I am willing and ready to give up a lot,” he said, when she would not speak. “But you cannot ask me to give up all.”

Then suddenly, he let go of her and extricated himself, if a bit clumsily.

“I’ll come back when you are sleeping,” he said and took a few unsettled steps backward, looking like he too, had to fight a bit of a stupor. “Just, please. Let me have a chance. – Lie to me if you must. Playact. Interrogate every word that I say if it eases your mind. But if whenever I look in your eyes, I see only mistrust and apprehension, there is no hope for me at all, Galadriel.”

He left her with that, clutching the air – and it was only then that Galadriel noticed she had brought her hands up to rest on his stomach when he had kissed her. Now she was leaning against nothing. And the sensation left her feeling utterly unmoored.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE RETURN OF THE KING

Galadriel had a hard time falling asleep. But Halbrand kept his promise and did not come back in all that time. She tried to keep her mind blank through all of it, with varying success. And when she finally dropped off, only to awaken within the next heartbeat, she lay on her cot on her side and heard him on the other side of their tent, already on his feet. She blinked slowly and as the world came into sharpness, she saw that he had his back to her, busy with his clothes, apparently choosing an option for the day from what he had laid out on the floor in front of him – having already taken apart his cot and side table. The most alerting thing she saw however was that he wore no shirt. 

His back was paler than the skin of his arms which were usually turned to the sun but the level of his tan was not what caught Galadriel’s eye. It was the way his muscles moved under the skin, how his shoulders sat broad and wide over narrower hips, how he turned around a little bit which offered her a glimpse at the soft ridges, the dips and valleys of his stomach. He did not seem to be aware of her watching him – but then he had not seemed like he had realised she was watching him toss that apple the other night, which he very much had.

So Galadriel forced herself to close her eyes again, remain perfectly still until it sounded like he had chosen an option from his limited selection and secured the rest of his clothes for travel. Only then, did she make a little show of waking up and sat up in time for him to turn around to her.

“We need to dismantle the tent,” he said instead of good morning. The tunic he had chosen in the end was dark brown, matching his black chauces. It was a very sensible choice for a three days’ march.

Galadriel put her feet out the side of the cot, placed them on the ground - and hoped they would carry her. For some reason she anticipated shaky knees.

They turned out to be steady though, something she was infinitely glad for.

“How did you sleep?” Halbrand asked as she took apart her cot.

“Well enough,” she replied and kept her focus on the task at hand. 

“Did you give any thought to what I asked of you last night?” He asked.

I have thought of nothing else, and what you did after, would have been the honest answer, but she simply said “Yes.”

“And?”

She turned around to him and tried to control her features. “I have resolved to believe you that you desire betterment. But if you deceive me again, I will kill you with my own two hands.”

“By all means,” he shrugged. “If that makes you feel better.”

She still could not read him. But she had decided that he had a point, if she was honest. Betterment and redemption required a bit of good faith. It needed hope and encouragement and Galadriel ought to provide it, no matter how hard it was. She would of course keep up her guard, but she would try and be supportive as well as she could. Or pretend where she could not be. She guessed he was satisfied with her answer for the time being though, because a bit of his easy manner returned over the course of the morning. He never addressed the kiss, never brought it up again. Which was why Galadriel was preoccupied with it for their whole journey to Osgeende.

***

It was early on the third day that she was first alone with Halbrand again. Before, they had ridden on opposite ends of the convoy, Halbrand bringing up the front with Arondir – occasionally rearranging the guard or sending the elf out for a quick scout – while Galadriel and Bronwyn had kept an eye on the rear and made sure that no one fell behind. 

But as the third morning came and they had finally left the Western mountains at their back and crossed the Anduin on an old Elven bridge that was likely on its last legs, Halbrand had sent for her and asked that she ride ahead with him, to scope out the lands. Galadriel complied, least of all because anything else would have caused suspicions and together they left the convoy in the charge of Arondir and Bronwyn.

Their horses could have gone faster but for the sake of appearances, Halbrand and her only rode about a league ahead and kept riding along the river to their right. The ground was mostly flat terrain – but in the distance they could already see the forests that Galadriel knew would shrink and shrink until their final demise in order to build Osgiliath, Minas Anor and Minas Ithil from its wood and ground. In between those woods and on the river Osgeende should be waiting for them.

“Galadriel,” Halbrand called out behind her and she pulled the reins of her horse to slow it down.

“Have you seen something?” She asked him, alarmed.

“No,” Halbrand replied. “But we are breaking off too far from the convoy. Let us slow down.”

Galadriel did not want to slow down. Because slowing down would mean conversation and she had no idea what to say to him.

The last few days had been confusing for her. Keeping her promise of taking his actions more kindly, more trustingly, had unnerved her. Mostly because it was so easy to believe he was sincere. The littlest things were the worst. The way he would watch children play with a big smile on his face when she could not be completely sure he even knew he was being observed. It was the fighting advice he had given Theo one night by the campfire, which had ended in cautioning the youth about charging into battle blindly without having explored all other options before – because his mother would surely suffer greatly if he was to die before his time. It was the way he never got tired of his charges roping him into conversations and the way he seemed so truthfully interested in hearing their stories. 

It could all as well still be manipulation or seduction… but maybe he really just wanted to experience a free life. If anything, nothing was more obvious than the love the Southerners already felt for him. Without any of Galadriel’s well-founded qualms, they had accepted him fully, even after less than a week as their king. She could hardly blame them. Before she knew his real name, she had felt much the same way.

“You must be pleased,” she said as their horses fell into a slow trot side by side.

“About what?”

“About how much your people love you,” she said and tried to not sound accusatory. “They have opened their hearts for you. No one questions you as king.”

“Why would they?” He asked. “I was presented to them by a Númenorian Queen and the most famous elven military commander. - There is precious little to be wary of.”

There was something else that Galadriel had observed during the last couple of days that made her curious. She decided to bring that up until the conversation had the chance to turn to other things she would rather not think or speak about. 

“You were eating and drinking the whole journey,” she noted and looked over at him. “How does that work if it supposedly binds you to this form and diminishes your strength.”

“Do you wish to know all of my secrets, elf?” He asked, narrowing his eyes at her - but there was twinkling in them and he was smirking again, so she knew he was not angry or guarded about the question. Quite the opposite, he seemed to delight in schooling her.

“Do you see this big cloud ahead?” He pointed at the horizon and his big cloud was very much impossible to miss.

“We will have rain,” Galadriel muttered.

“Very likely,” he agreed. “Let us say this cloud is my spirit. In actuality, it looks nothing like it, but the dimensions should be correct, if it had a proper form. – Do you follow?”

Galadriel scoffed indignantly. “Yes, I follow. I am not a halfwit. I am capable of imagination.”

Halbrand chuckled. “Apologies, I did not mean to cause offence.”

“Just move along with your little analogy,” Galadriel ordered impatiently. “You are the cloud, I understand.”

“Very well. – My spirit is not bound to this body by one cup of mead or one plate of clams alone,” he continued, unperturbed by her annoyance. “It happens in increments. Every bite I eat, every sip I drink takes about its equivalence in size from that cloud and binds it to this form. I would have to eat and drink like a man for well over a century for that alone to bind me.”

“Hm,” Galadriel hummed and looked away from him, up at the cloud to imagine tiny little bites of it disappearing. 

“That kiss however,” Halbrand said and Galadriel stopped breathing with a start, careful to keep her eyes steady at the horizon, careful not to betray how little she wished to discuss what had happened. “That kiss took about what a year would of food and drink. Lying with you would take the equivalent of ten, I’d wager. – Siring a single child on you would take half of the cloud.”

Now, what was one supposed to say to a thing such as this?

She had no idea, which was why she remained silent. She had no thoughts in her mind other than him saying ‘lying with you’ and ‘sire a child on you’.

“Careful Galadriel,” Halbrand murmured after an indeterminable length of time and her head snapped back to catch him smirking. “You are going to make me think I found a way to make you speechless.”

“I am not speechless,” she said, her voice raspy from misuse.

“Certainly.” He tipped his head and for the first time he did her the favour of not antagonising her further. “We should rejoin the convoy. Best not to get separated from the group in the woods.”

“I’ll ride back to the rear,” Galadriel decided, already turning her horse around.

“Of course you will,” Halbrand called after her and sounded like he was deeply pleased with himself.

***

Galadriel did as she had promised and spent the rest of the track through the woods along the river talking to Bronwyn and Swete about this and that. This is why she only learned of the trouble up front of the convoy when conflict had already started brewing.

Galadriel pulled Bronwyn up onto her steed when one of Halbrand’s new guards called for them and passed the rest of the Southoners on horseback. The further they rode, the more animated and concerned the people looked. They arrived on the clearing in front of the fishing town to find Halbrand and Arondir, along with the new guard, standing in front of the wooden palisades that kept outsiders out of Osgeende.

“Perhaps if we laid siege?” Galadriel heard Arondir muse, when she and Bronwyn got off the horse and joined them. “Or threaten to destroy the bridge?”

Arondir pointed at the wooden bridge behind them, which crossed the Anduin and shielded the lively harbour beyond.

“Let’s not hasten towards conflict,” Halbrand cautioned but he looked uneasy all the same. 

“What is it?” Galadriel asked.

“They refuse to open the gate,” Arondir replied. “Now we are made to wait to hear it from the mouth of their Lord Mayor, the man who governs this town.”

“I say we should not wait!” One of the young men from the new guard said. “They have no right to refuse entry to their king!”

“Please,” Halbrand urged. “Calm yourselves. Let us speak with the man first, I am sure he can be persuaded to see reason.”

As if on cue a host of men dressed in fine garb appeared on top of the city wall, taking places along the balcony overseeing the clearing and left a space in the middle for a stout, round-bellied and grey-haired man with a full beard. He wore purple robes, adorned with jewels and rich embroidery and Galadriel figured this man was the master of the town simply for having amassed the most wealth.

“I am afraid we are at capacity,” he said with no prelude or even a word of greeting. “We must ask you to take your caravan to another town. Mayhaps Grenveend, a couple miles down the river.”

“Lord Mayor,” Halbrand said and inclined his head before breaking from the line. “Please, my people have walked a long way looking for shelter. May we at least have a conversation? Our homes have been destroyed, darkness has befallen our lands, we have nowhere to turn.”

“I see the darkness, alright,” the Lord Mayor said and gestured towards the mountains behind them where the dark cloud of ashes lay steady over the South like a blanket, “and I am sorry about the plight of your people – but we cannot help. There is no room to house your lot. We have enough hungry mouths to feed as it is and the river has not been kind to us this year. We cannot sustain you.”

“Your fishing boats filled to the brim in the harbour tell a different story,” Halbrand said, devastating without even raising his voice. “And you are surrounded by woods – surely with enough lumber to build new houses. We are capable, we can build our own shelter, we only ask for a hand in aid, for some compassion.”

“I am sorry, we have none to spare,” said the Lord Mayor. “Now, I suggest you move along before I send my archers to replace me on this palisade.”

“You dare to threaten the king?” The same mouthy guardsman yelled. “Your king? Do you not know who this man is?”

Halbrand hooked his thumb under the crest he wore on the little pouch around his chest, the one he had picked off of the dead heir to the Southern throne and tilted it, so as to be better visible to the Lord Mayor and his footmen who started whispering among themselves.

Galadriel could feel the shift in atmosphere among them. They too, reacted much like Bronwyn’s people had at the sight. They were ready for a king, desperate for a real leader. And the Lord Mayor saw it, too. He did not like it.

“A king you say?” He bellowed. “With what proof? Do you mean to tell me a little necklace should persuade me to open my city gates to a band of what as well might be bandits? Come to steal from our hearths and ravage our women? – Nay, I say. Nay! Take your leave, False King, and take your vandals with you, or I swear you will feel the wrath of Lord Walda!”

“Shall we run them?” The soldier asked Halbrand and Galadriel knew he would if Halbrand only so much as whispered the affirmative – but Halbrand did not.

“Stand down,” he said to the young man and bowed to Mayor Walda. “As you wish, Lord Mayor.”

Then he turned to the Southerners who had gathered behind them by then: “You heard it, my friends. It seems our journey to safety is not yet at an end. But for today, we have travelled far enough. – We shall make camp in the woods tonight and continue upstream tomorrow.” There were murmurs, some shouting, some wails. “Do not despair! I will not leave you. We are a strong people, we will prevail.”

The Lord Mayor and his entourage watched from their perch as Arondir and Bronwyn pushed the crowd back into the woods while Galadriel remained with Halbrand at the tree line until the last of their host had cleared the expanse in front of the city gate. Only then, did they bring up the rear.

“Did you truly mean it?” Galadriel asked. “Will we continue for another town tomorrow?”

“Not yet,” Halbrand replied. “You know I do not give up so easily. – This Lord Mayor is obviously interested in one thing and one thing only… riches. This pouch might not have convinced him to take me for a king but a King’s treasure might.”

“But you have no treasure,” Galadriel reminded him.

“What do you know?” He jested. “It might take me a moment to get hold of it but I know of a few of Morgoth’s dragons who died and left behind a couple of caves filled with gold.”

“So you plan to buy him off?”

“It seems most prudent.”

“How will you do that, if he won’t even speak to you?”

“I came with two hundred people at my back today, enough to alert them to close their gates. One man alone in a cloak can easily slip through the city border. I will go to him on the morrow and try my luck again.”

“I will come with you,” she said, more so she could keep an eye on him than anything else.

“No,” he declared.

“Excuse me?”

“You are too recognizable,” he said. “Frankly, too beautiful. There is no man who looked upon you today who will not remember your face until they go to their graves. That would defy the whole purpose of me sneaking in.”

Galadriel hated it, but he was probably right. Still she had no interest in conceding this. “We’ll see,” she said instead.

“Indeed we will.”

“I won’t sleep,” she told him, just so he would not think to sneak off in the dead of night.

“Suit yourself,” he replied easily and later, he had no qualms with her watching him all night in their tent.

***

They sat on their opposite sides on their cots as they had grown accustomed to, and neither of them spoke much. Occasionally, Halbrand would try to convince Galadriel – either by mockery or feigned concern – to go to sleep, all the while promising he would not leave her side. But Galadriel would not give in. What he did not know was that she did not need to sleep in this reality either, and so she was happy sitting out this one night.

As the first rays of sunshine painted the fabric of their tent a light pink, Halbrand righted himself on his cot and looked over at her.

“Happy now?” He asked her and she nodded. “I see we are making great headway on you trusting me.”

“It won’t come overnight,” she told him and she would have said more but then Arondir burst into the tent, looking alarmed.

Galadriel and Halbrand both jumped up in unison.

“What happened?” Halbrand asked.

Arondir looked both pained and ashamed. “The new guardsmen! – I was asleep… they stole away before sunset and broke into the city. They have taken the Mayor’s Palais by force and hold him prisoner. They await your orders. The city is wide open.”

Galadriel looked to Halbrand to gauge his reaction – but instead of the triumphant elation she half-expected, he looked displeased, almost annoyed.

“Was that your doing?” She asked him anyway.

“No. I was with you all night. – These fools,” he lamented. “I had it all in hand.”

Then he huffed out a frustrated breath, shook his head and donned a moss-green jerkin from Eregion, following Arondir outside. With his hand on the tent flap, he paused and looked back at Galadriel with an impatient look on his face.

“Well, are you coming, then?”

She moved instantaneously. Of course she was. 

***

The gate of Osgeende indeed stood wide open and the townspeople noted their hasty arrival on horseback. No one made any move to stop them and Galadriel thought that there was no great love among them for their Lord Mayor. He probably only had the affections of those he paid for it. This impression only solidified as they were let into the Palais and realised that only the fifteen guardsmen held the whole building. They guarded merely the Lord Mayor, his wife and their two small children. No one else seemed a threat, everyone else had let them proceed.

The Lord Walda was kept in what he must have fashioned for himself as a sort of throne room. It was not a great hall of marble as Galadriel knew from the elves or even mortal kings. This was a hall of wood, of mahogany floors and rich burgundy curtains draped over the windows. But there were two large wooden chairs on a platform at the far end of the room where she figured this Lord was holding court from as if from thrones anyway.

He now sat there, flanked by two guardsmen, looking sour and afraid, though the latter he sought to conceal, if poorly. The mouthy soldier, whom Galadriel assumed to be the ringleader of this unsanctioned mission, charged ahead to speak to Halbrand, and looked like a puppy dog who had brought his master a present. If he had had a tail, it certainly would be wagging. 

“We took the city for you, my king,” he said. “Shall we dispose of this Lord Mayor.”

“No, and you should not have done that,” Halbrand said cuttingly and the young man faltered under the scrutiny immediately. 

He began to apologise but Halbrand shut him up with a wave of his hand. “Unhand him,” he said to the other guards. “Let the man go.”

The guards bowed and looked sheepish and embarrassed, stepped away from the mayor but the mayor did not move.

“I apologise,” Halbrand said to him, crossing the hall to come upon him and bow. “Forgive these young men, they are afraid and do not know their manners yet. But I assure you, they do not speak for me and I have not ordered this.”

The Lord Mayor sat up straighter and righted his clothes. “Your men talked of orcs in the South,” he said. “And an Uruk at their helm, causing havoc.”

“That is true, my lord,” Halbrand confirmed.

“And they will attack us?”

“Not any time soon, I believe,” Halbrand said. “But their master is hungry for power and he will try to take all of the Southlands and eventually want more still. We are resolved to keep that from happening. We will march against him once we have had a chance to recuperate.”

“You and your host of vigilantes?” The Lord snickered but there was no conviction behind it.

“We have aid,” Halbrand said. “From Númenor.”

This got a bit of a reaction from the mayor.

“And their kind?” He gestured towards Galadriel and Arondir.

“The elves will come when called,” Galadriel said.

“Should the need arise, we will protect you as well,” Halbrand offered. “We will not forget your kindness, should you open your doors to us. We do not wish to take from you needlessly. Like I said, my people are capable. We need not trouble you for anything you can not part with. We shall build our own houses and gather our own food. We only seek a safe harbour.”

“And you are a king you say?” The mayor asked.

“The heir to the Southlands,” the mouthy soldier supplied. “Your king.”

“With some means to reimburse you for any troubles,” Halbrand promised.

“Let me see this broach of yours again,” Lord Walda bid. “This crest around your neck.”

Halbrand easily parted with it, pulled it off from the front of his jerkin and tossed it over to the mayor who caught it and studied it.

It was all for show, Galadriel knew it. This whole interrogation, it was a show of empty force. The mayor was saving face and Halbrand was wise enough to let him. The truth was, he had no standing anymore. His supporters had obviously deserted him and the tidings of an army of orcs just a mountain pass away must have done their part as well. Surely the mention of Númenor and elves in support of this new king and a vague promise of compensation for his troubles only sweetened the pot. The mayor turned and turned the sigil in his hand as if it meant anything to him. Then he nodded, gravely, calculatedly.

“It seems I was mistaken,” he said slowly, as if he was only just making up his mind, and stood. “I do recognise this. Please forgive me. I was a fool. – But you see I was charged with keeping this city safe and I could not just put blind faith in a king who came from nowhere.”

Galadriel held back a snort with some effort. He was spineless but his first instinct had not been wrong. Not that it did him any good.

“I see now, that our king has returned,” he declared and then bowed low and exaggeratedly – and stepped away from his throne. “I am your humble servant, my liege, the city is yours. Please accept my deepest apologies.”

“There is no need for them,” Halbrand hurried to say. “And I have no need for your seat or the rule of this town either. You have led it well and true and my desire is that you continue to do so. I only wish to be your guest until I can lead my people back to their home.”

“Then I will gladly oblige,” Lord Walda said and relief seeped out of every orifice of the man. “You and your elven companions will be put up right here, in mine own home. My people will open their houses to yours and tomorrow, we will start on building new houses for them. – But tonight! Tonight, let us have a big feast! A celebration with song and dance to rejoice in the return of our king! If it please you, of course, my lord.”

He curtsied, all humble, snivelling reverence. Galadriel was amazed how Halbrand had managed this feat again, hardly lifting a finger. And still new people seemed to want to bow to him every day. 

“A celebration sounds wonderful,” Halbrand beamed. “I know me and mine have need of some joy and distraction.” The mayor bowed again, slightly overdoing it. Halbrand ignored it, and turned to his mouthy guard. “Please gather our people and tell them to get cleaned up for the celebration tonight.” Then he turned to Arondir: “Bronwyn, Isildur and you shall also receive quarters here at the Palais, I am sure there is enough room?”

He did not even look at Lord Walda but he still piped up with an “Of course, my lord.”

***

Next thing she knew, Galadriel was presented with a suite worthy of a merchant’s only daughter, and left to her own devices. She could hear Halbrand be put up at the end of the hallway and walked over to the sturdy bed to allow herself a moment of rest, sitting down on the firm mattress. It had been since Eregion that she had seen a proper bed and all her bones yearned for a chance to just lie in it and forget the world for a while.

She did not know if she was meant to intervene in some way, if things were getting out of hand in a fashion she could not yet foresee. But she had promised some good faith to Halbrand and she had to concede that he had played the whole affair smartly and without bloodshed. He simply had not done wrong. And his thanks was shelter for the people following him and a feast to boot. Try as she might – and she had promised she would not – she could not find fault with any of how the morning went. Yet, it still felt wrong somehow. Like she should feel guilty for going along with him, just because it was him. And the discrepancy between what he kept showing her and what she knew him to be capable of seemed like a chasm too wide to bridge… too deep to comprehend, even. So she resolved that at least for today, she would cease trying.

Halbrand was right, they all had a desperate need for distraction. She was no different. She wanted, no, she needed an evening of merriment. A chance to push some of the weight she carried off of her, if only for a time. Maybe she would even dance! Definitely she would drink, may even allow herself a bit of a stupor, half of a buzz. For a full one, she would have to drink the whole town out of house and home, given her elven sensibilities, but a little buzz should be achievable if they had some good liquor in their cellars. 

She allowed herself a sigh and a smile. It was an indulgence – but she thought she had rather earned the respite. Still, she did not dally or even take the rest her new bed offered. Instead she decided to help get the people settled if she could and otherwise explore her temporary new home. So a few minutes after, she stole out of the Palais and let herself get carried away by the crowds in the city streets.

***

Osgeende was a rustic little town. Some buildings were made of stone, most of those temples. The majority was made of wood and in the innermost city they stood two or three stories tall, flanking tight, winding streets that wove in and out of each other and followed the paths of a few babbling little side-arms of the Anduin. Little bridges connected the streets that were broken off by the streams and everywhere stood little carts where tradesmen and cooks had their goods on offer. It was obvious Lord Walda had lied about his people going hungry. There was plenty of food to go around and from what Galadriel could tell, the townspeople were happy to open up their doors to the newcomers.

There was little need of Galadriel to aid – and when she ran into Bronwyn, the woman told her as much – but as she wandered, Galadriel kept spotting familiar faces being shown around, welcomed into houses and given food and drink. The children were the most touching sight of all. They ran around, making fast friends with the young of Osgeende and the sound of laughter filled the streets. It reminded Galadriel of her first day in Númenor, only that Osgeende was tiny compared to it, and a lot more dirty. But it made no matter. There was life on the streets, and happiness. It was a good day, she decided. And Halbrand had not made it any worse. Quite the opposite.

She stopped on one of the little bridges to follow the length of the canal with her eyes, watching a young boy on a small boat deliver bottles of milk straight to the window sills of the houses built on the sides of the channel. Then she heard a voice she knew and perked up.

“Leave me alone,” the voice whined and it sounded distressed; very at odds with the otherwise wholesome and peaceful scenery around.

Galadriel left the bridge and followed the voice that kept begging to be left in peace, rounded the corner into a little alley and then saw her: Swete, surrounded, or cornered more like, by three boys who were all a bit younger than her.

“Sweaty Swete, ugly cow,” one of the boys sing-songed as the other pulled at her skirts.

“Stinky Swete, looks like an owl,” sang the other and caught one of her beautifully fashioned braids and pulled.

“Leave me alone!” Swete had tears in her eyes but whenever she shook one boy off, another would latch onto her to push her around.

Galadriel felt bile and anger rise up in her throat.

“OY!” She called out and the boys whipped around to her, startled.

They had the good sense to instantly look caught-out and ashamed. “You better get lost right now and hope to the One that I do not find your mothers!” She bellowed and charged forward, quick enough for the boys to bump into one another, trying to get away. “Off you go – and if I ever see any of you behave so poorly towards anyone ever again, you will have another thing coming!”

The boys scurried, saying sorry under their breaths, but Galadriel paid them no more mind. Instead, she quickly went over to Swete, who was now openly bawling and touched her by the shoulder.

“Are you alright?” 

“Ye-yes, my lady,” Swete sniffled and wiped her nose with the filthy sleeve of her even filthier dress – she looked like she had taken a dive into a puddle at an earlier point in the day. “It’s… it’s my own fault. I asked to play with them because the girls were… the girls were being mean and I thought I could… but it’s true. I stink. I am filthy. Why would anyone want to be around me?”

“Don’t,” Galadriel said. “Do not talk about yourself this way. You are a wonderful person and there are so many people who will love spending time with you. – Do you want to come to the Palais with me, so you can get cleaned up? – Where are your brothers?”

“Playing,” she answered and sniffed once more. “The family who took us in, they have boys the same age. They did not want me around.”

“All the better for now,” Galadriel smiled encouragingly. “Then they can spare you for a time. – We can get you ready for the big celebration tonight.”

“I can’t go,” Swete said sadly.

“Whyever not?”

“Look at me,” she scoffed. “I look ridiculous. And I have only this one dress. I cannot go to a dance like this.”

“Nonsense,” Galadriel told her. “You can have one of my dresses.”

Swete gasped. “Really?” Her eyes swam with wonder and gratitude.

“Really,” Galadriel said.

***

The girl was still no obvious beauty, even in Galadriel’s best dress – a soft blue one with billowing sleeves embroidered with delicate silver thread – but done up as she was, with a brand new intricate braid and a little bit of Galadriel’s elven eyes and lips tint, she looked captivating in an unusual sort of way. People who were resolved to be mean and cruel would still find fault with her but to Galadriel, the girl was a joy to behold. And most importantly, looking into the mirror in her quarters, Swete seemed to agree. Her eyes went wide as she observed her reflection, turned her head as if to make sure her mirror image followed, so as to confirm it was really herself gazing back.

“Is this really me?” She voiced her thoughts, touching her face as if she could not believe it, then the dress. “Oh, it’s so beautiful, are you sure you would not like to wear it instead?”

“No, no.” Galadriel shook her head. “I will happily make do with this one.”

She had chosen a dark red dress with a wide, round neckline, golden appliques and a delicate golden belt the colour of her hair tied around her hips. 

“I am so excited,” Swete declared. “I have never been to a real dance before. Not one like this. – I am sure you have been to many.”

“I have,” Galadriel said. “But that was a while ago.”

“Will you dance then? Show us an elven dance?”

“Perhaps.” She smiled.

“Will you dance with the king?”

Galadriel gulped. The question had taken her entirely off guard.

“Sorry,” Swete said and looked at her hands. “It is just… he is so handsome and you are always around each other… I just thought–”

“No, that is alright,” Galadriel interjected and forced herself to keep smiling. “I do not know. I might. If he asks me to.”

Swete seemed pleased. Galadriel suddenly was not. She had not thought of this. Now she did.

And she did not know what was worse; being afraid that Halbrand was indeed going to ask her to dance… or knowing she would be secretly and shamefully devastated if he did not.

Chapter Text

 CHAPTER NINE: A WORLD OFF ITS AXIS

“My lady?” Swete asked, her voice raised as much as a girl of her sensibilities could probably stomach, and Galadriel whipped around to her.

“Forgive me,” she  replied. “I was distracted.”

“I only meant to offer to braid your hair again,” Swete said.

Galadriel gladly accepted the offer and as the mortal girl began to work, Galadriel tried to get a hold of herself. 

Of course she did not truly wish to dance with Halbrand. She might have, thousands of years ago, if he had just been Halbrand, but like this, knowing all she knew, why would she want that? And while yes, there was theoretically a case to be made about binding him to his human body through all the things he had told her during the cloud conversation, she had decided against that. Because this was not real and she should not have to. 

She might have felt compelled to have done it thus in the past, had she known it would take “only” two children to bind him to his form, but as it was, now that everything had already happened, she did not know why she should put herself through the ordeal. The way just the thought of it threw her entire being off kilter should be more than enough to dissuade her from entertaining the idea any further. So she sought to distract herself.

“Do you have a boy you would like to dance with tonight?” She asked Swete, turning the tables around on the girl.

“Oh,” the girl yelped. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Do you not desire them?” Galadriel asked.

“That’s not it,” Swete said and pulled a little at Galadriel’s hair to make the braid tighter. “I just… I know not to get my hopes up. No one has ever looked at me that way. Not the way they look at you, my lady. You are so beautiful. And I am… this.” Swete used her free hand to gesture along her own form, as if that explained it all. “I don’t think that I can be loved like that.”

“You should not think such things,” Galadriel admonished softly. “Everyone deserves love.”

“It is not a question of deserving it,” Swete murmured. “It’s just… not everyone is lucky enough to find it.”

“You know, for the longest time, I felt that way, too,” Galadriel confessed, moved to sincerity by the girl’s obviously hurt feelings. “Until I met my husband.”

“You are married?” Swete looked close to aghast.

“I was,” Galadriel said. “But my husband died in the war against Morgoth.”

“I am so sorry,” Swete said, seemingly horrified. “I did not mean to remind you of that pain.”

“It is alright,” Galadriel smiled sadly. “It was long ago.”

In all honesty, this was the first time since she had travelled to the Hall of Mandos to come face to face with Sauron again, that she had spared more than a fleeting thought for Celeborn. Because in reality, he was not dead, was probably not dead in this, her dreamscape, either. But her task left no room for distractions of this kind and she could not allow it to divert her from her path. She had not even said goodbye to him before starting the trials, which seemed odd, considering how much time they took. But then again, in the real world, time passed differently. The first and second trial had only taken a day each in Aman, even if they took ages in her and Sauron’s minds. Really, she was not gone all that long – alas, it did not feel like that.

“Only, if that helps,” she said as Swete was fastening the braid with golden pins, finishing up her work, “if you love like that, you can get very, very hurt. So if you truly believe it is not for you, maybe in the end, it’s for the best.”

Swete nodded solemnly and then her demeanour lightened when she presented Galadriel with her once again exquisite braiding work. Galadriel was thankful for something else, too: the reminder of Celeborn had added another level of resistance to her attempt to shut off these kinds of thoughts about Halbrand, the ones she should not be having at all. Her heart was already taken, there was no room for any other.

Celeborn was all that was good and true in the world and she had to remain faithful to him. In action but most of all in thought. The kiss… well the kiss had happened and she had neither initiated nor reciprocated it, and that would be the end of it. And surely, Halbrand would have a host of others to dance with tonight, maybe Bronwyn, maybe another of the women who kept watching his every move, hoping to catch his eye, and he would never think to ask her at all. It would all be well.

“Let us not be sad tonight, yes?” She asked Swete. “Let us eat and drink and dance and be merry. We deserve that much, don’t we?”

“Yes, my lady.” Swete nodded eagerly. “Yes, I believe we do.”

***

When Swete went to collect her little brothers for the celebration, Galadriel took the opportunity to explore the Palais. The mayor’s underlings had done impressively swift work decking the place out with flowers and more drapery, and already it was beginning to crowd. Inside there were mostly the well to do and any of the newcomers who desired entry. The poorer folk of Osgeende had also slowly begun the festivities outside. Mead and meat was served on the Palais steps and musicians had started playing lively music. As the sun started to set, inside the Palais, they were all ushered into the big hall.

Galadriel moved as part of the crowd, saying hello to familiar faces and finally found Bronwyn, who had donned a midnight blue dress she told her was a loan from the woman she and Theo were housed with. Theo himself had cleaned his white shirt himself in the stream and combed his hair.

“For the first time since he decided I do not get to do it anymore,” Bronwyn said and Theo blushed with embarrassment at his mother divulging that information to Galadriel.

“I think you look very handsome, Theo,” Galadriel said to make him feel a little better and the boy only blushed more, his gaze snapping down to the ground as he mumbled a thank you. 

“Go fetch us something to drink, will you?” Bronwyn asked her son and he hurried away - but stopped after a few paces to turn around.

“May I also have one?”

“One,” Bronwyn allowed. “And do not let me catch you with a second.”

Theo grinned and Galadriel had a pretty good idea that he mistook this to mean he could have more if his mother just did not notice.

“They grow up so fast,” mused Bronwyn, looking after her son. “You do not have children, do you?”

Galadriel almost said that indeed she did, but then caught herself. She did not, not in this world. “No, no children.”

“It’s as much a pain as it is a joy,” Bronwyn said.  “You never cease to worry.”

“I can imagine,” Galadriel said. She could do more than that, knew it was true from experience. 

She meant to say more but then there was the sound of a clearing throat behind them and they both turned to see Arondir in his usual uniform, inclining his head to them. Bronwyn beamed at him.

“You both look beautiful,” he complimented. 

“Where is the king?” Bronwyn asked and Galadriel tried to tell herself she did not much care to hear the answer.

“He should be right behind me,” Arondir said and turned around, looking for the man. “Ah, he got held up I see.”

Behind them, on the threshold into the hall, Halbrand was led in by the elbow by the Lord Mayor who was telling him something very animatedly, looking like a man desperate to please. Halbrand seemed to be humouring him, and nodded his thanks to all of the other guests who made way for them as they passed. 

“Allow me to say a few words to the people,” Galadriel heard the mayor tell him, and then he bowed low to Halbrand and left him to walk to the stage at the far end of the room.

Halbrand scanned the crowd and when he spotted her and the rest off to the side, he strode over quickly, only pausing to greet others on the way. He wore a black velvet jerkin over a billowy black linen shirt – and a delicate dark silver crown, which was new. He caught Galadriel’s sceptical glance at it. 

“A gift from the mayor,” he informed her. “I could not refuse.”

Sauron, king of men . It was an alarming sight, but Galadriel had promised herself one night without doom and gloom, and so she chased the visions of him with his spiked helmet off of her mind and turned to the front, where the Lord Mayor had just started to welcome them all to the festivities.

“To regale our distinguished guest, the returned King Halbrand of the Southlands, allow me to present our very own Osgeende choir, here to present us a prayer to the One in honour of our king in the ancient language of this land.”

From the crowd, a choir formed, at least eighty men and women strong, most of them young. Mayor Walda stepped off of the stage and stood to the side to make way for them. Their conductor joined them to polite applause, then silence fell over the room before the song began. 

First, they hummed together, then half the men and women laid out a rhythm for the rest of the men to start vocalising the beginning of the prayer. Galadriel knew the words but had never heard the tune. Then she caught Halbrand make a little, sudden move beside her and turned around. He was grinning, excited. 

“I know this,” he told her and looked as innocently bright as a spring morning. “It is beautiful.”

Galadriel could not stomach looking at him, the joy on his face tugged at something deep inside her that made her chest feel tight with sadness and longing. But she could still see him as the song went on, from the corner of her eye, moving a little to the rhythm and mouthing along with the words. Nothing of his behaviour made sense in conjunction with the horrible flaming eye that knew no mercy or compassion and only wanted to rule. Those two images were diametrically opposed – and it did not compute for her at all. She tried to focus on the music instead, and had to give it to him, it was beautiful.

The choir sang in unison for a  while and a man started beating a drum. At times some of the men would stray from the melody, the women rising above all every now and again, making the hairs on Galadriel’s arm stand up in the most wonderful way. Then they would call and answer to each other, push each other onward, raise each other to new heights. And Halbrand beside her grew evermore animated.

“You can say what you wish about Eru,” he leaned in and mumbled close to her ear, “but the bastard did inspire some truly wonderful art.”

Galadriel kept from laughing out loud by a hair.

The choir in front of them grew louder, more spirited, and Galadriel allowed herself to get swept up by the power of their voices, closed her eyes to submit to it and felt like she could touch the sky. It was pure light, elation and joy. She wanted to live in it forever. Then the conductor reined in his singers and they dropped their voices, the high sopranos soaring above all as they started low only to build up again to sing louder yet. Two men broke off of the group to yell the words in unison, praising the One, and then fell silent to allow for another breakdown and another rise. Then the quality of the song became truly ethereal. They left volume behind for feeling and ended as one, softly, and Galadriel opened her eyes again to find them wet.

The crowd erupted into thundering applause and Galadriel joined in.

“Thank you kindly,” Halbrand eventually said when it had quieted down. “What a fitting way to begin our festivities. We are grateful for your hospitality, Lord Mayor. – And all you people of Osgeende; let tonight be the beginning of a great friendship! Let us feast now! And dance!”

“Hail King Halbrand,” a couple of men shouted from the back, and everyone repeated it. 

And then the celebration began in earnest.

***

As quickly as he had joined him, as quickly was Halbrand whisked away again to attend to the crowd. Galadriel tried at first to keep an eye on him but then eventually decided to let him work the crowd as he was bound to with or without her observing. Instead, she perused the assortment of drinks and chose the most potent one she could distinguish and had a few glasses in quick enough a succession to land a mortal on a gurney. A group of musicians had started playing, and at the front, the dance was beginning. At the back of the room stood long tables with benches where people ate and drank and occasionally sang along to the music.

There was drumming, lutes and flutes and merriment all around. The dances of these people were not half as refined as the elven dances she knew, not even as refined as the dwarf dances or those of higher bred men – but they looked to be double as fun. Galadriel walked the length of the hall with a new drink in hand and smiled when she found Bronwyn again at the back. She was watching from afar as Arondir was testing his arm’s strength against her son Theo.

“He is letting Theo win,” Bronwyn mused.

“It builds self-confidence,” supplied Galadriel.

“He is very kind, is he not?” Bronwyn suddenly sounded both worried and wistful at once.

“Theo?”

“Arondir.”

Oh, Galadriel thought, oh! Of course! Arondir. And Bronwyn! Of course she had noticed it in a tangential way – the way they had reunited in the command tent, forehead to forehead, or the way they would speak to each other in hushed tones… but Galadriel had not paid so close attention, not while Halbrand and Bronwyn had interacted so closely. Now it all fell into place at the same time that something ugly released the clasp around her heart.

“How do you do it?” Bronwyn asked and Galadriel turned her head to the woman and she must have looked at her in a way that communicated she did not catch her meaning. “Your… relationship with Halbrand. You are an elf, he is a man. Arondir is an elf and I am… forgive me, if I am overstepping. It is just so hard to chart the right path.”

Galadriel choked on a sip of her liquor and wondered if it was to blame for her suddenly feeling light-headed or if it had been Bronwyn’s question.

“We do not have a relationship, Halbrand and I,” Galadriel said and now it was Bronwyn who looked like she did not understand.

“I did not mean to—” she said. “I just assumed… you two share such a bond.”

“A bond of circumstance,” Galadriel said. “We have need of each other. It is really rather unromantic in the cold light of day.”

“But you would want it to be?” Bronwyn asked carefully. “Romantic?”

“What I want or do not want signifies little,” Galadriel answered, trying to give Bronwyn somewhat of an answer that would not betray anything too real or too complicated. “It cannot be.”

“But why?” Bronwyn cried out and quickly lowered her voice. Galadriel knew her indignation was not pertaining to Halbrand and her at all. “Just because one is an elf and the other a mortal, does not mean there cannot be love between them. And is love not good?”

“It is good until tragedy strikes,” Galadriel said quietly. “And in such unions, tragedy always strikes. It is inevitable. You may feel tenderly towards each other now but what happens to Arondir if you die?”

“Well, won’t he move on?” Bronwyn shrugged. “I expect he would grieve me for a time but then find happiness again. Such as it is for humans. Our loves end or they perish and we continue living.”

“Ah, but you do not feel love quite like we do, you are built more for heartbreak than we are,” Galadriel said. “Our love grows far deeper and it is not quick to bloom. We are built to live forever, our love is made of sturdier fabric. If Arondir let himself love you completely, there is a good chance he would never recover from losing you.”

A loud laugh rang out over the music and Galadriel saw Halbrand again, now on the dancefloor, spinning in a circle, hand in hand with adoring admirers on either side. He looked like a completely different creature than the nightmare she had come to fear. She felt like she had never known him at all. Or maybe she had… and had not let herself believe it.

“Some say elves only ever truly love once,” she said, charting Halbrand’s merry dance across the floor. “I do not know that this is true. But I do know it cuts deep. And if a love like this ends or is betrayed, that is an anguish that never leaves you. It’s a lot of pain to carry for an eternity – as well, if you were to fall pregnant, bearing an elven child would likely kill you. Our children take much, even from us. You would not survive it.”

“At least this is not an issue,” Bronwyn said, with a tinge of sadness. “Before Theo’s father died, we tried for a long time to have another child… but Theo’s birth was not easy and after, I could not have any more.”

“I am sorry,” Galadriel said.

“All is well. I have Theo, I have no need for more children,” Bronwyn said. “But I have need…” She sighed, almost whined. “Arondir. I do not know how to survive without him. Should this not be worth it? What we share between us, is it not worth the pain?”

“A blink of an eye worth of happiness for an eternity of despair?” Galadriel asked. “If you truly love him, should you not spare him that? Should you really wish to consign him to an existence of misery?”

“What of you then?” Bronwyn challenged because she did not appreciate what Galadriel had to say. “If you let yourself want what you want, would you not go with Halbrand and use whatever time you have with him, no matter the consequences? – I see the way you look at him. I may be nothing but a human but I have eyes and I know love when I see it.”

“I do not love Halbrand,” Galdriel insisted and willed herself to calmness.

There was no way to make Bronwyn understand. She believed, as did Elrond, that the biggest obstacle in her and Halbrand’s path was his mortality when it was quite the opposite – and what he would do with all that endless time given to him. The jolly music was at odds with the tension between the two women and Galadriel took another sip of her liquor. She had planned for merriment and distraction – this was decidedly not it. 

“I think you are lying,” Bronwyn stated, her brow furrowed. “I have not decided if you lie to me or yourself but I believe you lie all the same.”

With that, she was off to be with her son and love and Galadriel tried to remind herself that the woman was not angry at her in particular. She was angry at the world and wanted to bargain with the fates themselves to change her destiny. That notion was not all too foreign to Galadriel herself. 

She was so deep in thought, she lost sight of Halbrand again and only saw him again when he stood right beside her. He smelled like dancing and wine.

“You are drinking,” she noted, trying to shove everything that had just transpired between her and his deputy to the back of her mind.

“So are you,” he said and tilted his head at her, tracing the length of her hair with his eyes  and then gently twisting one of the little braids Swete had woven into it between his fingers. “Artful – Now where is that little girl? I saw you march her into your quarters this afternoon as a duckling and release her a swan.”

Galadriel looked around – and indeed there Swete was, standing by herself at the side of the ball, a wallflower, even in her pretty garb. She looked wistful, longing to join the dancing but seemed too shy and afraid to take the step. Halbrand followed Galadriel’s eyes.

“Ah,” he said. 

“She thinks no one will want to dance with her because she is ugly,” Galadriel told him.

“Well, we cannot have that,” he decided and then just as quickly, he moved, leaving Galadriel there to her own devices.

He crossed the space easily, went right over to Swete and offered her his hand. Galadriel was as speechless as Swete looked, though the girl eagerly accepted without words. Halbrand led the girl out onto the dancefloor as a new lively song began. To say it caused a stir would be an understatement. The other girls around Swete’s age on the dancefloor from their party whom Galadriel knew from sight looked entirely confounded. 

Envy and sheer disbelief coloured their features as the king they all so adored spun the spindly, pale girl in a wide circle, moving her expertly between the other dancing couples. In her arms she bloomed. She looked radiant – and for the first time, truly beautiful in her joy. Halbrand kept nodding at her encouragingly and Galadriel could practically hear the swooning and pulses quicken within the ladies’ bosoms all around. Her own heart ran cold.

Was this a kindness or just another way to try and rope her in? He knew she was watching. It killed her more and more that she was unable to tell the difference. She had half a mind to leave all of it behind and retire to her chambers – but she had wanted, had needed this night for herself, and she refused to let Halbrand ruin it, so she stayed and watched. 

The song ended to applause and when Halbrand bowed to Swete, there was a young lad from the townspeople asking to take over. And while Swete happily obliged, Halbrand moved quickly – away from the girls and women positioning themselves close to him, hoping for his favour – towards Galadriel. And then he did what she both dreaded and desired: he held out his hand to her in an unspoken question.

“I know none of these dances,” she told him, her mouth so dry it was a wonder the words even made a sound.

“But I do,” he smiled and then made the decision for her by grabbing her hand and leading her back to the dance floor. 

A quick beat began to laud in a new, spirited song and all around them, pairs formed and arranged themselves into two circles, an inner and an outer one, with Galadriel and Halbrand on the outside. Everyone raised their right hand to their partner, so Galadriel did the same and twisted her arm around Halbrand’s so their wrists touched between them at the height of their foreheads. 

She kept her eyes on him and was glad for the distraction the foreign dance meant; she had to focus on copying everyone’s steps and following his lead, and as long as she did that, she had no time to think of anything else. They moved in a tight circle around each other, then switched arms and directions. Then Halbrand took her hand and turned her out to look at the couple clockwise in front of them as everyone else did the same. Halbrand tugged her hand up just in time for the couple in front of them to dip and walk backwards underneath Galadriel and Halbrand’s joined hands. 

Galadriel surrendered to the dance and trusted Halbrand to lead her then, and the movement switched every couple of turns from being danced together with the other couples and having moments just to themselves. Those were the ones where it was hardest to breathe – and not because the steps were particularly taxing. As the song drew to a close, Halbrand spun Galadriel under his arm before twisting her in a way that she ended up half in front of him, her head turned back towards him as they intertwined their arms once more so the back of their hands were pressed tightly together. And they were spinning just as the rest of the world seemed to cease to. 

She held his gaze without inhibition or caution, too wrapped up in all of it, the music ringing in her ear. He was boring into her soul with those stolen hazel eyes of his, so deeply that she could no longer separate this version of him from the monster he hid beneath. There were stars behind them, and wonder. He smiled, just a little, and she could feel her face burn with the pull to mirror it. Instead she panted, trying to catch her breath. Trying to regain some semblance of control. He was so close. She could count freckles and flecks in his eyes and she felt like he reached down to her soul through hers and pulled her towards him with no hope of resistance. 

He changed positions again, she hardly noticed. She was so lost to it all that she did not help him a bit as he twirled her around one last time, then picked her up by the waist, held her up high and set her back down onto her feet upon the last beat of the song. 

People applauded and Galadriel stood in front of him unable to move. He hovered close to her in a way that reminded her of the tent. She could taste his lips on hers, the kiss flashing back through her mind at full force. She wanted him to kiss her again. So badly that she knew nothing else to do but break away from him within the next heartbeat and as good as run from the floor. She paced herself still, so as to not rouse suspicion. Just until she had passed the entry to the hall. Then she ran. 

***

Quite unable to catch her breath, Galadriel ran past all the people standing about and chatting and celebrating. Past the rowdier, louder festivities in front of the Palais, and through the streets and until she left them all at her back, careful that no one was following her. She could dimly hear the echoes of talk and music but she focussed on the sound of a babbling brook nearby, and finally ended her flight on a small wooden bridge over a canal.

It took her a moment to recall she had been there before. There were still a couple of milk bottles on the window sills that the delivery boy had placed there in the afternoon. It seemed a million years ago. 

She grabbed the railing hard and stared into the stream. The moon overhead was half-hidden behind thick clouds and its reflection in the ripples was the exact colour of her hair. She could barely see herself in the water. She felt barely there, barely real.

She did not even flinch when a crash of thunder disturbed the faint noise and distant echoes of music of the city in celebration – and she only found it so very fitting when the first drops of rain finally fell, after she had anticipated them since the day before. Her beautiful braid was getting wet, her pretty dress soaked. She did not care, she hardly felt her face. She wanted just a second of peace to gather herself… but she did not get the chance.

“Am I really such a horrendous dancer that you had to flee before I could ask you for a second turn?” Halbrand said behind her and only now did she flinch.

She refused to turn around to him. It was really impossible that he had found her so quickly – but she knew better than to question it. She could only ask him for a bit of a reprieve from all the confusion he caused her.

“Please, can I get just a moment to myself?”

“Why?” He asked and came up to her, casually leaning against the balustrade to study the side of her face from close-by, though his voice sounded anything but casual. “Why, Galadriel?”

And try as she might, she could not help it. Could not fight it, lacked the strength to. There, on a little bridge over a little arm or the Anduin in a little fishing town under the moon… she burst out laughing. 

She turned around to him, guffawing despite herself and laughed even harder when she saw the perplexed look on his face. He had no idea what was happening, but the funny thing was, neither did she. This only made her laugh harder. She held onto the railing, clutching it for dear life as new ripples of laughter rolled over the last ones, an avalanche in and of itself. 

“What?” He asked with a tint of sympathetic amusement to his voice. “What is so funny?!”

She howled, bent forward and then fought to stand upright again, so she could give him an answer.

“This!” She exclaimed and hollered. “ Us! Is it not… completely ridiculous?” She laughed again, had trouble getting the words out. “It’s the height of absurdity! The whole world is off its axis! You killed my brother, you destroyed the world, you are pure evil – but here I am dancing with you! Wanting nothing else but to dance with you! Is that not comical? – I mean, look at us!”

She roared on, completely out of control, held on to his arm to steady herself and he looked back at her as if she had lost her mind.

“And you!” She continued, hysterical. “You still go back and forth between doing better and, and… playing all the angles so you can destroy everything in your grasp within a second if you change your mind – Do not deny it!” She warned him as he tried to contradict her and cut him off with another bout of laughter. 

“Oh, but you want me!” She continued when she could. “You want to please me so much that you’d actually give up your boundless spirit and tie it to this meagre human form! – How did we get here? Is it not absurd?! You are darkness, breaking yourself in half for my light–” She snorted, her face now hurting from laughing this hard. “And I am not just touching the darkness, I am prancing around a dance hall with it!”

She shook his head at him, full on belly-laughing at this point, and Halbrand could not help it either. He chuckled at first, then cackled. Until finally, he too laughed, loudly. It carried over the rain that was now pouring and they stood in the downpour like mad people, laughing and laughing and laughing. It was endless, that laughter. It was not mirth, it was madness. But was it liberating! Galadriel’s whole body hurt with the spasms of laughter and he laughed with her, grabbing for a hold of the railing himself. It felt like flying, this hilarity, like they were both weightless for a moment.

Until it took its toll, made them both tired; catch their breath. Until they both stood upright again, facing the other, and Halbrand raised a wet hand up to Galadriel’s wet cheek and took it in his palm, featherlight. The smile died on his face, the same death as hers, and for a moment utterly suspended in time, they just looked at each other. Him in reverie, lost in her eyes, her coming to, returning to the pain and the longing no one else could conjure up in her quite like him. It took him a second to catch on to the change in her, but when he did, he dropped his hand. 

She breathed out in a huff, trying to shake off the fog from her mind. 

“Galadriel,” he whispered, a plea but for what, he didn’t seem to know himself. She could not tell if it was raindrops or tears in his eyes.

“Don’t,” she muttered, and took a step back from him. “Do not make this harder than it needs to be.”

Then she ran away from him again and this time he did not follow.

***

She did not return to the celebration. She snuck off to the upper level, off limits to the rowdy guests, dried her soaked hair, dressed in her nightgown and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Hoping for sleep was a cruel joke and even when finally, after hours even the last of the drunkards and dancers had retired for the night, she could not find rest.

This was why she was wide awake, too, the moment Halbrand gently let himself into her bedchamber when it was almost dawn already. He had shirked his jerkin and his black shirt hung open in the front, flowing with his movement as he came towards her. Galadriel sat up quickly, though she was not half as alarmed as she thought she should be at his intrusion.

“Have you come to watch me sleep?” She asked as he slowly walked over to her bed and sat down at the furthest edge of it, looking out the window, mindful to give her space.

“I do not know,” he told her and seemed utterly sincere. “I have no inkling why I am here. Perhaps to torture myself a little more.”

“Perhaps you deserve that,” she offered.

“Probably, I do,” he murmured and then turned to face her. “I thought about what you said. About the way I want you. And your light.”

“Go on,” she said when he fell silent for a moment.

“I think you are so cautious of me because you know that that’s not entirely true,” he said and took a deep breath before he went on. “I need your light. But I want your darkness just the same. It fascinates me. Your anger, your fury. Your reckless pursuit of revenge that you claim is justice. Your power. – It entices me. So much that sometimes I can’t breathe with it. There is something inside me, a tempest, a hunger. Something that is not myself, that yearns for control. That thing wants to own you, to ingest you and make you my own, to… to bind you to me in complete domination.”

“I want to open my mouth and hear my words in your voice, I want to pull you so close we become indistinguishable from one another.” Another pause. “I need your light, but being around you means I am constantly on the brink of falling prey to that monster within myself. And I think you know that. – Do you know what else I think?”

“Enlighten me,” she said, toneless.

His words were causing such a stir in her, it was hard to think straight. She should be horrified with his confession. Instead she felt her whole skin abuzz with it, and a treacherous dampness between her legs.

“I think it’s the same for you,” he muttered. “I never understood it before tonight, but I think you are afraid of my darkness because it so mirrors your own. I think you wish to own and rule and dominate me too. And maybe not just me, maybe this entire world, maybe all of it, just like me.”

“That sounds like we ought to stay far far away from each other,” Galadriel said and shifted where she sat.

She could see down his shirt, the expanse of his bare chest shrouded in shadows, and she should focus on something else, anything else, but she just wanted to strip him out of it.

“Or it means that we are each other’s salvation,” he mused. “Maybe the one challenge that could distract us from seeking to control the universe is seeking to control one another.”

“Sounds exhausting,” Galadriel said and forced herself to look back at his face. “Though I think it might be a little more pleasurable without all the orcs and the blood magic to contend with.”

“Speak for yourself,” Halbrand quipped.

Galadriel chuckled before she could stop herself and upon catching his self-satisfied smirk about his joke landing, she laughed fully, if only once before solemnity claimed her again.

“This,” he said and suddenly stood up from the bed, as if he had fulfilled a calling. “I came for this. I needed to hear that again, your laugh. Now I can retire to my own quarters in peace. – But let us try to be a bit easier on each other. Do you think we can do that?”

“Perhaps,” Galadriel said to one of his little nods and then watched his retreat. 

When he reached the door, she called his name, which gave him pause. He turned around to her once more.

“Sometimes it feels like we are still on that raft in the middle of the ocean,” she said.

“Sometimes I wish we still were,” he echoed sadly and the next thing she heard was the door closing behind him.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TEN: A DIFFERENT DANCE

Just like the Lord Mayor had promised, the day after the celebration – though not as early in the morning as it was supposed to – work began on building housing for the temporary guests. It was agreed upon to build a larger hall for the kids and youths who had lost their parents. They would be looked after there by some men and women who had in turn lost their children. Then seven three-story houses would be constructed, which would each house ten families. The rest of them could be relocated to pre-existing empty houses in the city. Until construction was completed, the hosts would keep their doors open to the newcomers and from what Galadriel could see, there was great willingness to help.

The Lord Mayor remained submissive to Halbrand to a pathetic degree. He invited both Halbrand and Galadriel to be a part of the city council meetings which were held once a week. They were the most dreadfully dull affairs Galadriel had had to sit through since the olden days in the real world when Saruman would prattle on and on and on about complete insignificancies whenever the White Council had met. She only sat through them to see to it that Halbrand would not do anything megalomaniacal. But after three weeks of that, she had to concede, that when he even said anything, it was always just suggestions, and they were usually the most helpful things to be said during the whole ordeal.

Generally, Halbrand was not giving her cause for concern, try as she might look for it. She had laid off of him a little bit, choosing to simply observe without much judgement how he would fare here. For a multitude of reasons this seemed like the most prudent way forward. One, because Halbrand had told her repeatedly that he struggled under her scrutiny, and she did not want him to fail because she was not giving him enough space. Two, because this was a trial of the contents of his soul after all and for it to have any merit, he would need to be able to actually chart his own path without Galadriel trying to influence every step he made. And three, because giving him some freedom to do so, meant she could keep her distance from him, which she desperately needed to.

She had been alive long enough to not delude herself about the emotions that had wedged themselves between her collar bone and chin. It sat in her dry throat, lay in her stomach like lead. It made her knees weak and her thoughts circular. It was twisted and wrong and it should not be. But she was old enough. She knew better than to pretend it was not what it was. She was falling in love with Halbrand. And really, it should not come as a surprise. All those years ago, when this young face was truly her own, she had loved him, too.

Maybe not the way she did now, with actual conviction – which was the worst of it all – but she had started to fall for Halbrand somewhere between him murmuring “Don’t start” behind his Númenorian bars when she came to convince him to come back to Middle Earth and fighting side by side with him against Adar in the Southlands. Back then it had been easy enough to ignore and then quickly relinquished upon the reveal of his true identity. But now it could not be pushed aside.

It should not be happening. Loving Halbrand meant loving Sauron, and this seemed a completely impossible concept. Still, attempting to fight it and act like it was not true was only going to make it all worse. So, she had resolved to accept these unbidden, unwelcome feelings, and allow them to pass through her. Maybe she only felt them so strongly because they were so forbidden. Maybe if she were not so tempted by the evil that lay in the power he offered to her, or the power that came with his evil, she would not be in this position.

If Halbrand noted the change in her, how she told herself to relax and give him more space to move and breathe, he did not acknowledge it. He simply utilized his new freedom. In some ways to Galadriel’s pleasant surprise, in some ways to her well-expected chagrin.

A surprise was the fact that he did not work in secret alone, or did not appear to at least. He had built his own circle of advisors; Galadriel herself, Arondir, Bronwyn, and the mouthy soldier whose name was Brod. He brought them together in regular intervals to convene on next steps and listened to what they had to say. Of concern was at present merely the attention he lavished on Isildur.

Galadriel did not believe he could have any inkling of how important Isil was going to be in the future, for now, he was a means to an end to secure the enduring favour of Númenor, but this made no greater difference. Halbrand spent endless hours with the boy trying to get him back on his feet. It was a lengthy, painful process and Isildur had grown wary and frustrated with how slow it was going. But Halbrand held firm and kept encouraging him. It was largely thanks to his efforts, that Isildur was now able to stand for a few minutes at a time, even if placing his full weight on his crushed leg was still a ways off.

There was a small chance that Halbrand was doing it all out of compassion but while she did love him, she would not go so far as to truly believe this. He had ulterior motives, like with everything he did. But then again, didn’t everybody?

***

Four weeks into their stay at Osgeende, after Arondir returned from a week of scouting with disconcerting news of movement in Mordor, Halbrand’s Council had determined that it was high time they somehow got word to Númenor. Arondir had just offered to take one of the boats to cross the Sundering Sea himself, when Halbrand voiced another idea.

“What if there was a quicker way?” He said. “An instant way.”

“What would be quicker?” Bronwyn asked. “Other than magic, which we do not possess?”

“Not magic exactly, merely capabilities which we lack, but not all of us,” he said and turned to Galadriel. “Is it not so that High Elves can communicate much faster over great distances than any other channel would allow, through the mind?”

Galadriel looked at him for a moment, baffled. Mostly because she herself had not thought of this before. How had she not thought of that before?! She quickly ran through the past, went back to who she had been at this point in time, so as to not alert him to the fact that she had indeed lived many lives and mastered this form of communication ages ago – and adjusted her reply.

“I have not done this a lot. I do not know if I am strong enough to cover such a great distance,” she said. “It doesn’t always work. And it requires an open mind at the end of it. I doubt the Queen knows how to listen and Elendil was furious with me when he left.”

“But surely, it is worth a try,” Halbrand insisted and then looked down at her hand. “You are more powerful than you think you are.”

Nenya, Galadriel thought, of course. There was something ugly in the way he looked at her and the ring, something that reminded her of the comment he’d made in Aman, right before the first trial. About the strength of the Valar inside her. And once more, she wondered if, even in this world that was so different, he only wanted to use her for her power after all. Maybe in ways she could not foresee even with all her knowledge and wisdom.

“I will try,” she said, and she was not surprised when for the first time in weeks, Halbrand visited her in her bedchamber that night.

***

“I would be very glad if you could join Brod and me for training the other soldiers tomorrow,” he told her before coming out with the real reason he was there. “By now nearly all have regained their strength, but many are still too brute and unrefined in their fighting. They could use your instruction.”

She considered him for a moment. “I will,” she said, and he smiled. “Now tell me why you are really here.”

“I only came to see how the reaching out to Númenor was faring.” He shrugged innocently.

“Why now, so suddenly?” She asked, eying him. “Why the urgency?”

“You heard Arondir,” Halbrand said. “The enemy is on the move. And these white-clad-women that have joined with Adar, they are not just regular women.”

The priestesses, Galadriel recalled. Arondir had spoken of five women in white robes that now followed Adar around, helping him build his black tower at the foot of Orodruin. She knew from what was to come that they weren’t mere mortals but had gotten ungodly powers and prolonged life by Morgoth and had been searching Middle Earth for Sauron, much like Galadriel herself had before. Halbrand must have known him from his own past, too.

“They are witches,” he provided, needlessly to her, though he did not know this. “With them at their side, Adar is only strengthened.”

Galadriel watched him closely. And she saw it. She could tell he could tell, and he tried to make his face impassive again, but it was too late.

“You are afraid he will surpass you,” she stated. He almost flinched. “You fear that he could become stronger than you.”

“He already is,” Halbrand said gruffly, and Galadriel was shocked by the open admission more than she could process at the time. “It’s this brittle, human body.”

Halbrand left his spot just behind her closed door where he had stood before, to pace, and his frustration was palpable. “If I had a more powerful vessel… or none at all and was just free to move, Adar would be dust tonight.”

His anger was concerning. It was also almost comical. He seemed like a jealous child. Like Adar was playing with his toys. The uruk was getting his start on building the empire Sauron must have envisioned building for himself when he was still Morgoth’s right hand. Yet now he was not Sauron but Halbrand, a king in nary more than name with a gang of untrained human soldiers and little else – and he had vowed redemption to her so many times that he must have felt powerless to forgo the assurances he made her. Galadriel did not know if he was fully aware that he could just break his oath to her, shirk this body and become the evil he so seemed to envy right now. Because he did have that power. Galadriel would be unable to stop him, if this were real.

As it was, should he choose that path, she assumed the trial would be over and she would have another problem, having to return to the Valar a failure with nowhere to put Sauron, unredeemed as he would be.  

“Oh, do not look at me like that, elf,” he scoffed because he must have known exactly what she thought, even without being actually able to read her mind. “If I wanted to, I could have done it weeks ago. I could have taken over his body and all of Mordor would be mine.”

“Why didn’t you?” She asked, because she could think of nothing better to.

“You know why,” he snapped.

“It was you who asked for my light,” she reminded him but tried to be careful with his sensibilities, lest he decided to turn to darkness simply because her vexing him was not worth the trouble. “Do not complain now that it is harder to walk in it than to return to the shadow.”

“But he is winning, don’t you see?” Halbrand strode into the center of the room, gesturing with both his hands, beseeching almost. “If we do not stop him, the shadows will get us all anyway. – We need Númenor’s numbers. And yours.”

“I told you I have sent word to Gil-galad asking for reinforcements,” she reminded him because it was true.

“And he has been dragging his feet!” Halbrand complained. This was also true. “Why do you think that is, Galadriel?”

“Do not take your anger out on me,” she warned. “I assume he has his reasons.”

“Purely altruistic reasons, surely,” Halbrand scoffed.

In all honesty, Galadriel had no answer for him. Gil-galad had received her emissary and heard her message, she knew because said emissary was Arondir and he had returned from Eregion two weeks ago. And since then, there had been no word from the High King.

“He is concerned with the elves, our strength is still fading,” Galadriel speculated.

“He has a ring of power!” Halbrand exclaimed. “What more does he want?”

“You do not understand,” Galadriel said.

“No, I do not,” Halbrand shot back. “And I do not care, frankly. – All I care about is getting enough people behind me to send Adar back to the hole he crawled out of. And if your people won’t help, we need Númenor.”

“What happened between you two?” Galadriel asked and remembered faintly what Adar had told her so many centuries ago, about how he cut down Sauron.

She assumed the answer would have been something like ‘He kicked me when I was down’ and figured Adar was the one who had separated Sauron from his body before he became Halbrand. But maybe there was something else. All she knew was that Halbrand would not answer her question.

“The Queen or Elendil,” he said instead. “Who would be more easily reachable?”

“Elendil,” Galadriel decided.

“Well,” Halbrand said and once again sat down at the edge of her bed, “let’s try then.”

Galadriel shot him a dirty look because of his commandeering tone but she still took his hand when he offered to supplant his own strength to hers and Nenya’s, and she felt it warm and calloused around her fingers as she closed her eyes and reached out across the sea.

She took her sweet time, not because she had to, indeed she found Elendil’s mind rather quickly and very susceptible, but because Halbrand did not need to know the extent of her powers in this regard just yet.

She found Elendil in a dream. It was a bad dream, a desperate one. He was stumbling through an ashen forest, looking forlornly for his son, calling out for Isildur and receiving no answer. That was until Galadriel made herself known to him.

“You,” he growled. “I should never have followed you to that wretched Middle Earth. – My son! My son is dead!”

“He is not dead,” she told him, proficiently, because Elendil immediately changed – but only to fall apart again.

“This is a dream,” he muttered.

“It is.” She nodded. “But I am not. I am reaching out to you from Middle Earth where your son awaits you.”

To make her point, she sent him some memories of Isildur in his wheelchair. Isildur trying to walk. Isildur standing on his own with Halbrand hovering by his side.

“Is this true?” Elendil looked heartbreakingly hopeful.

“Yes,” she replied. “And it is not only Isildur who waits, it is all of us. The enemy grows ever stronger in the South, and we need to defeat him together, once and for all, before he cannot be stopped. – When can you join us again?”

“Galadriel,” Elendil sounded guilty, lowered his eyes. “It is difficult. The Queen, she… there is unrest in the Capitol. Chancellor Pharazôn, he is leading a group of separatists who control the port.”

“We need you, Elendil. Your son needs you.” It was a cheap trick using Isildur for her own means, but Galadriel figured it could not be helped. “Any man you can provide helps. – The Queen promised us Númenor would be back.”

“I will see what I can do,” Elendil promised.

“Good.” Galadriel nodded. “You must.” And left him with that.

She opened her eyes to a curious looking Halbrand. “And?”

“And… I got through to him,” Galadriel answered and dropped his hand. “Though Númenor is not as united as we left it. He will have problems coming up with any great numbers.”

Halbrand let out a grunt of irritation and stood up from the bed.

“Thank you for your effort, my Lady Galadriel,” Galadriel said mockingly as he should have, pointing him to his lack of manners as he stalked towards the door.

“Thank you,” he said, turning his head around and then paused, schooling his features to soften. “I am looking forward to seeing you on the training grounds tomorrow.”

She sighed and nodded and then he left. It was a peculiar thing, conversing with him thus. There was precious little to be found of him of that Flaming Eye, even when he was teetering on the edge of falling down into the shadow like this. He had sense, this version of Sauron. He had patience, no matter how annoyed he was at having to come up with it. He had poise and foresight. Most of all, she thought, he had a chance.

***

The training grounds were outside the city bounds, on an old, misused wheat field beyond the harbour. Osgeende stood, wooden and lively to their west, the Anduin to the South. East were more fields and a short walk to the North laid the edge of the forest. Brod and his guardsmen had set up benches and all sorts of equipment for battle schooling; wooden swords and blunt ones, as well as the banged-up shields and breastplates from the Númenorians. Those of the Númenorians who had healed from the eruption and the previous battle with the orcs, also joined in the training. Though Galadriel could practically smell how superior they felt to the Southerners, just by virtue of all the training they had already received. There was a small group of younger boys from Bronwyn’s village, too, and in their midst: Theo.

“They are too young to fight,” said Galadriel under her breath to Halbrand as they rounded them up for the lesson.

“They need to learn,” Halbrand replied stoically.

Galadriel wondered if Bronwyn knew her son was there, but then again, she likely did.

Halbrand got started on the training as she supposed he usually did, running drills and setting up pairs to mock-battle with each other. She walked among the rows of them, correcting forms and offering advice and so the morning turned into the afternoon. While everyone was falling back into order after a quick lunch, one of the new guardsmen spoke to his friends about Halbrand and his skill, every bit a boasting admirer.

“Ah, he may be quick and capable, but he has nothing on Commander Galadriel,” a Númenorian girl said, Zamîn, one of the cavalry soldiers Galadriel had instructed back in Númenor. “She is faster and more refined.”

Galadriel stood next to Halbrand, and she watched him square his jaw with a smirk on her face.

“Jealous?” She asked him. He just pulled a face.

But the Southerner boy was not as gracious as Halbrand himself. “He would still beat her in a fight! He is a man; he is stronger than her.”

“No, he would not,” Zamîn insisted. “He is a man, surely, but she is an elf.”

“I’d wager,” Brod said. “Three coins on our King.”

“Five on the commander,” Zamîn said and in no time, there was a betting pool and next, fifty pairs of eyes on Galadriel and Halbrand.

“Do not start,” Galadriel warned him, not in the mood for a childish display of strength when they had better things to do – though she could see Halbrand, or better Sauron, felt called to the challenge.

“But there is so much money on the line,” he said quietly to her, a grin threatening his lips. “Shall we have another dance, Galadriel? – Or are you scared you might lose to me?”

That did it.

***

“I merely agreed to this because it can be a teachable moment for you all,” Galadriel told their students, lying through her teeth, as she marched them to the edge of the woods. “You will not always have open spaces you will fight on. Sometimes you will meet the enemy surrounded by hindrances. You need to be able to fight them on any terrain, surefooted and certain. – I will fight your king here, at the edge of the trees and you can observe how to best move around obstacles while keeping a firm eye on your opponent.”

“She is going to crush him,” promised Zamîn, and most of the remaining Númenorians agreed, while the Southerners had full faith in Halbrand.

They both got their swords, real ones, and stood in front of the tree line, as if it was their stage, while the others gathered to watch.

“Ready?” Halbrand asked.

“Always,” she promised – then Halbrand winked, his eyes alight, and he struck first.

Galadriel blocked his strike easily and he seemed pleased with her instant reaction. She gave him another. Quickly, she twisted her wrist and his sword around hers along with it and swung at him immediately after. He parried, stepped back and then waved his weapon around in a little show, advancing on her as she retreated. He hit the air next to her ear as she dodged another blow, adjusting her stance to account for his offence. And then their dance truly began.

They gave each other nothing, he pushed her towards the trees, striking at her again and again but he could not land a good hit on her. She was faster than him, simply because she was limber, smaller and thus more agile. Also, she used the trees they moved into to her advantage, where to him, being the primary attacker, they were more of an inconvenience. Out on the field, the soldiers were howling and reacting to every move, cheering on their respective champion, but Galadriel barely heard them.

Then she went on the attack, struck at him a couple of times but met only his blade or the air. He chuckled a raspy laugh when she wedged her sword into a tree and had to duck away from a falling branch after ripping the steel back out. Galadriel did not let this distract her.

They moved between the stems dexterously, neither one of them so much as tripping over a single root. Halbrand used a tree to fling himself around it by one hand, while dealing her a hard blow with the other – and she was winded, but she did not falter. Her biggest hindrance was indeed not Halbrand, nor the woods, it was her hair and her equally flowing dress getting in the way. She did her best to keep both under control as they raced each other along just beyond the tree line.

Halbrand was exalting in their dance and Galadriel had to admit that she was too. She felt energized, more alive than she had in years and years. It was exhilarating battling with him like that, matching up their strength. It felt like free-riding on horseback across a beach, like complete freedom. And fun. This really had no right being as much fun as it was.

She almost laughed a couple of times when she got in a good blow and startled him, but he was always quick to rebuff. They were perfectly matched. She would have wiped the ground with him had he really been a human, but he would have crushed her, had he not bound himself to such a mortal body. This way, they were even, a perpetuum mobile that could theoretically keep going forever.

The only real advantage he had on her was indeed his physical strength, which was again thanks to the fact that he was a Maiar and their power was almost as boundless as that of the Valar themselves. A couple of times, when her sidestepping his attacks particularly vexed him, their blades would meet, and he would put that strength behind it, squaring it against her with all his might – but then she’d twist her body once more and escape him again. She let him tire himself out like this for a time, and awaited her break to strike back.

Once she saw the moment was opportune, she charged at him, driving him further into the woods and from behind them, she heard their audience complain that they could not spot them anymore – but they were far away now, and Galadriel did not care. Because it seemed like victory was indeed in her grasp! Besting him was all that mattered to her in this instant.

Halbrand toppled, just a little bit, but it helped her advance. She could get one really good jab in, she knew it, and he would have to concede. She saw none other than this outcome, which was why she briefly disregarded her flank, brought her left arm too far out of its cover to switch sword hands – and Halbrand seized on the oversight immediately.

As she moved her blade from one hand to the other, dealing an instant blow, he blocked it with his sword and at the same time, grabbed the wrist which was holding the weapon and ripped it down. She was surprised and could do little but keep pressure against him, making an X of their blades, crossed between their bodies, as he shoved her backwards until her back hit a wide tree hard. She was panting, but he was out of breath too, as he pressed her against the unyielding wood.

She made a sound of exertion, trying to push him off but he did not let up and she could not get away. He towered over her, leaning in close, the steel of their blades warming from the sudden heat between them. She forgot what they were doing there for a moment, other than that they were close and he was beautiful and he smelled like sin. She as good as forgot her own name then.

They were both breathing in hard huffs, in unison, and their whole previous battle seemed a thing from a very distant past, compared to this eternal moment. Her body ran hot with a shiver as she remembered the last time they had danced, remembered them laughing together, remembered him telling her that he wanted to have her even closer than this, so that neither of them could say where the other began and they ended. In that moment, she wanted nothing more than that exactly. Halbrand was heaving, wet his lips, let them fall open and Galadriel could not help staring.

He had kissed her with those lips, breathed against hers with them so, so softly. What would it feel like if he truly held them against her? With the same force and will to power he now used to pin her against that tree? If he kissed her how he fought her; rough and fast and harsh and frenzied? What would he feel like? What would he taste like, moving that tongue against hers, moving it somewhere else, anywhere else?

All sense of grandeur and swaggering confidence disappeared from his face, replaced by a hunger. Something almost desperate, almost fragile about it, and he came so close their noses brushed together. He pressed even tighter against her, wedging his heat against her own, which made her breath stall entirely.

Halbrand looked at her as if she was the shadow herself and he was already falling, handing himself over to eternal darkness, and happily so. His force let up, just a little, as he must have lost himself in their proximity too, and Galadriel only noticed it because the fear of how perilously close she was to bridging that last little gap between them, crashed into her in that exact moment like a tidal wave.

She hesitated for just another heartbeat, weighing her blinding desire to have him, against literally everything else in all the worlds, let alone duty and caution, and then made her decision.

She used her free hand to push his shoulder and at the same time pushed her sword against his with every ounce of strength she could muster. It worked. She escaped his grasp, and he took a moment to recover before coming after her again.

Even faster than before, they drove each other back towards the clearing and as they approached, the cheers and calls from their spectators got louder. Galadriel fought her hair and dress blowing in the wind that hit them as they emerged as well as her clouded mind – but Halbrand did not fare much better. He parried one of her blows and attempted to twirl out of her advance, but he was too slow. She caught him out, driving his own blade against his neck, holding it against him as he pushed against hers. His back was pressed flush against her front, and he was bent in a way that her head hovered next to his.

The Númenorian’s cheered. “I told you!”, hollered Zamîn.

“She told you,” Galadriel whispered and Halbrand turned his head to her – the instant their eyes met, he had enough leverage to weasel out of their bind.

He pushed her in the process, and she barely regained her balance, before chasing him down. He turned the tables around on her and viciously attacked again, but he had the biggest, most innocently wicked grin on his face. He was not fueled by rage now; he was alive with the joy of it all. He looked precious like this, sweet and young and lovely. She stumbled.

He swung, swatting forward and she saw him note the root behind her foot the second before she felt it, and within the next blink, she was lying on her back, her body aching from the sudden fall. Still, just as he was about to put his sword to her neck to win their battle, she bat, one last time, and with hers, knocked his blade right out of his hand.

The sword flew across the air and landed too far for recovery, and Galadriel smirked as she brought her own up to point at him.

“That’s not a win,” bellowed Brod from behind him and instantly the whole gang of Southerners were getting into a shouting match with the Númenorians.

Halbrand, with his back to them, inclined his head and smiled graciously. Then he offered his hand, which Galadriel took. He helped her up and watched her as she dusted off her dress.

“How about we call it even and everyone keeps their money?” Galadriel offered and, in the end, that was what they could all agree on.

Their impromptu cavalry was babbling among themselves, and excited to do more of their own ‘dancing’, as they all walked back to the training set-up, with Galadriel and Halbrand trailing close behind.

“Did you let me win?” Galadriel asked, unable to shake the thought that he may have left the opening for her to disarm him at the end on purpose – but he only narrowed his eyes at her and bit his lips.

“I do not think it would be wise to tell you either way,” he decided after a time.

He was probably right.

***

That night, when Galadriel had retired to her bedchamber, her head was still spinning with memories of their little matching of strength – but most of all, her body was singing with them.

It was then that she would have loved being able to sleep, so she could later claim the innocence of hapless dreaming over what she did with all those memories – which was to imagine vividly what would have happened if she had not pushed him off of her. How she would have kissed him. How he would have claimed her. How she would have made him beg and forget he had ever worshipped any other beside her.

It was everything but sleeping she had in mind though, when she ran her own hands down her body to chase the promise of mindless pleasure Halbrand’s eyes had made her, pressed up against that tree. She fell apart under her own hands with a gasp. And she was wide awake.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER ELEVEN: BEAUTIFUL AND TERRIBLE

As shameful as Galadriel’s nightly exploits were, they helped to feel less fraught around Halbrand in the weeks to come. Whenever during the day, there were moments where Galadriel felt especially tempted to betray everything, she had ever thought true about herself, she would push it far into the back of her mind – and expel it like a demon, in her way, when she was finally alone again in the dark of night. It became a ritual of sorts, or a crutch. Still, anything else seemed utterly unthinkable.

The rest of her days were spent training the new recruits alongside Halbrand and watching with the same uneasiness that her desire for him caused her, as his attentions for Isildur’s recovery bore fruit. A week after the sword fight in the forest, Isildur took his first steps – like a toddler. Arild and Halbrand looked upon it with much the same enthusiasm and encouragement that parents would, and Isildur’s smile came readier and more easily by the day after.

***

When, another week later, two Númenorian ships appeared on the horizon on the Anduin, Isildur got out of his wheelchair and stood on his feet until the ships docked at the harbour.

It was the ship carrying Elendil which unloaded first, and Galadriel watched the captain embark before the first knot was even tied, running like a madman towards his son, all the while looking like he could not believe it was all real. It was a touching scene, seeing the boy and his father tearfully reunited – but Galadriel could not revel in it far too long because Halbrand, beside her, was not pleased with the number of soldiers Elendil had managed to supply. He hid it well, but she knew him enough to see past the charade. Even as he greeted Elendil, the Númenorian’s eyes still glistening with tears, and thanked him profusely for coming, there was an edge to his voice the mortal must have heard as well.

“Forgive me,” Elendil said. “It was not an easy feat getting here and it is worse in Númenor yet. – The chancellor and his followers have complete control now. The Queen is in hiding. These two ships and the hundred-and-sixty souls on them were all who could be persuaded to our cause.”

Before Halbrand could answer, two more voices rang out from the ship and called out to Isildur. It was an athletic young man and a beautiful young woman Galadriel vaguely remembered, both starting towards them.

“Brother! Sister!” Isil cried out and the siblings hugged.

“These are my other children,” Elendil supplied once the three had broken apart. “My eldest son Anárion and my daughter Eärien.”

Anárion bowed to Halbrand and Galadriel. Eärien curtsied, though off of her radiated only distrust and malevolence. Galadriel could tell by a glance that the young woman was not pleased to be there at all. The girl was too smart to voice her misgivings but there was no need to, the look in her eyes revealed everything.

“Welcome to Osgeende,” said Halbrand, unperturbed by her, if he even noticed. “I am deeply sorry about the unrest in Númenor, but we thank you for keeping your promise and returning to our aid.”

“You are welcome, friend,” Elendil said solemnly. “It is not like we have somewhere else to go at present. We are exiles now, the lot of us.”

Halbrand put his large hand on the other man’s shoulder. “You shall have a new home here, befitting your station and the virtue of your people. – Once our enemy is disposed of. You have my word. – Now let us get you settled and convene in the town hall.”

Halbrand led them all into town in a little procession, which was witnessed with great interest by the people of the city. Never had they seen such finely clad soldiers, so well trained and disciplined. The Númenorians only forgot their form when, on the square in front of the Palais, they were reunited with the comrades they had left behind in Middle Earth. As they were being shown to their quarters with much excitement – baracks on the old wheat field outside of the city hastily erected in the last few weeks – Elendil and his children followed Galadriel and Halbrand inside the Lord Mayors stately home. Mayor Walda met them there, extending the same sniveling reverence he had bestowed on Halbrand to the new royalty as well.

He took the children to see them to their new chambers and left Elendil to join Halbrand and his council in the Great Hall.

“I apologize for the way I left you,” Elendil told Galadriel, his voice lowered for privacy, as they sat down next to each other at the round war table set up in the middle of the hall, covered in the maps of the Southlands Elendil had left behind. “I was blinded by grief and anger, and I was wrong to blame you. You could not have known that the mountain would come alive again. You were not at fault.”

“There is nothing to apologize for,” Galadriel replied quietly, and felt Halbrand’s curious gaze on them, his forehead set in a frown. “I know how much grief can blind us.”

Whispering did not do her much good, her elven eyes might be slightly better than Halbrand’s human ones, but he still had exceptional hearing. It made no matter; it wasn’t like she was sharing secrets with the Númenorian lord.

“It was just… I was ashamed of my behavior,” Elendil reiterated. “Especially after having just now learned from my son that you and lord Halbrand saved his life and returned him to safety. This, after Halbrand saved me from an orc! I owe the both of you so much.” Elendil lowered his voice even further and told her in Quenya: “Hantanyë lyen.”

I thank you.

Galadriel would have told him once over that there was truly no need for such deference and shame but then Arondir, Bronwyn and Brod joined them and took their places around the table. What followed were two grueling hours of Halbrand laying out the situation at hand – pointing out their grim odds left and right.

They were at a glaring tactical disadvantage. Adar in Mordor had a host of at least three thousand orcs from what Arondir had gathered on his scouting missions. He was also constantly surrounded by the five witches who aided in the raising of his fortress which was steadily expanding. Even counting Elendil’s cavalry, their numbers were hardly pushing three-hundred soldiers.

“Thus, such as it is, we are outnumbered ten to one,” Halbrand said and then leaned over the table to point to Orodruin, “and Adar has the terrestrial advantage here as well – he will see us coming from the mountains from a mile away.”

“What of the elves?” Asked Elendil. “Will they not help?”

All eyes at the table turned to Galadriel and had she been any younger than she truly was, she would have blushed. She had tried, of course she had. On Halbrand’s behest, she had reached out to Gil-galad himself as well as Elrond to call for their aid again but had gotten no satisfying answer – and upon her second attempt to remind Gil-galad on the promise he had made to Halbrand, he shut her out. Later Elrond contacted her with sobering tidings.

“The High King can spare two hundred elven worriers to join us within the next fortnight,” she said.

“Which only marginally strengthens our numbers,” Halbrand said.

“Yes,” Galadriel conceded – but still had something to content. “Yet a well-trained elven fighter is worth ten men.”

“Be that as it may, it does not secure our victory. It is not good enough,” Halbrand insisted, and Galadriel had to fight a groan.

They had had this conversation time and time again, ever since Elrond had broken the news, but evidently Halbrand deemed it necessary to rehash the whole thing in front of Elendil. It was petty and unnecessary, and she was uncertain if him holding this over her head was purely due to his frustration with the tactical situation or because of something else.

There was a lot to be said about Galadriel standing in for Gil-galad as a misplaced target of Halbrand’s anger – but it was not her fault that the High King had as good as broken word. And it was not like she went to great lengths to excuse his choices either. In fact, they alarmed her more than she was willing to admit, because she had the uneasy feeling that something else was afoot in Eregion which she was deliberately left in the dark about. Still, Halbrand’s frustration with her did not seem purely related to the matter at hand. There was something deeper about his enmity and she had a good idea what it could be.

Time and time again in the last couple of days, Halbrand had been pulling at her mind, she could feel it. Felt him reach out to her sometimes and hit a wall there that was embedded in the very design of this reality. It was for his own good, but he was obviously not aware of this. Now, of course he had no more right to invade her mind as he did invading her physical space without invitation, but she knew it must have doubled the rejection he felt from her in both spheres. Not that this was her problem to content with, she did not owe him anything at all. But Halbrand, and Sauron most of all, was proud and day after day, she wounded that pride.

It only seemed very greedy of him, she mused. He had plead with her for a chance, for some faith in him and she provided it, gave him the benefit of the doubt and let him operate mostly as he saw fit. So now that she had given him her little finger, he seemed to want the whole hand of her, too. Now, he desired to make a cozy spot for himself in her mind or her bed or likely both and it unnerved her. Mostly because she wanted to give it to him. Yet, however much he pouted and struggled, she would not give him what he sought – and if that made him irritable and unpleasant with her, so be it then.

“It is what it is,” she said, rather than trying to placate him and he held her gaze harshly for a moment before begrudgingly moving on.

If for the sake of appearance or because he did not want to fight her, she did not know.

“Well, you heard the Commander, my friends,” Halbrand said tightly and turned back to the rest of his council. “We are at a grievous disadvantage – and we have to work with what we have. We must seek another way to destroy our enemy.”

“What do you have in mind, my lord?” Bronwyn asked.

“The orcs,” Galadriel heard herself say before Halbrand could, because she too had had thought about this matter of course. “They do not usually rally behind any one leader. Not unless they fear him enough,” supplied Halbrand.

“Or love them,” Halbrand said.

“Adar, as they call him, it means father,” Galadriel explained. “He created them, and they follow him. They would not so easily follow another.”

“So, we should cut off the snake’s head?” Elendil asked.

“So we should,” agreed Halbrand.

“The question is how,” said Arondir.

“I am open to suggestions,” Halbrand sighed and sat back down. “Adar will be at his new stronghold, likely high up in his tower, hiding like a coward, surrounded by his witches.”

Galadriel bit her lips at the mention of cowards in towers but she managed not to make a sound.

“We would need a distraction,” Bronwyn mused. “Something surprising that will draw as many orcs away from his side as possible, so another party can take the tower, kill the witches and dispose of him when he is defenseless. – Does he have any great strength of his own?”

“No,” Galadriel replied. “We picked him off in the woods easily enough. Halbrand nearly killed him then and there, I nearly did when he was in our custody.”

“Would that you had,” Brod piped up with a sneer and fell silent when both Galadriel and Halbrand gave him a devastating look.

“What would distract him thus?” Wondered Arondir.

“An attack on what is most vulnerable,” Galadriel answered. “Most essential to his machinations.”

“The breeding grounds,” Halbrand replied, his eyes alight with the new idea.

“Why should he care, he has more than enough of them,” Galadriel argued, finding this notion quite ridiculous. “And he can make more wherever he pleases.”

“Adar,” Halbrand said, holding firm, “means father. You heard him speak of them, they are like children to him. He cares for them and for them alone. If there is a threat to the fresh crop, he will act.”

“You cannot possibly believe that,” Galadriel as good as scoffed. “He does not care, not anymore than Morgoth did. They are but pawns to him.”

“You are wrong,” Halbrand remained, a dangerous edge to his tightness of voice.

“You seek to exploit love where there is none,” Galadriel argued, leaning forward in her chair, growing more aggravated, too. “It is a folly, it will not work!”

“What do you know of it, elf?! You have not been there!” Halbrand raised his voice to near shouting and stood up in a flash, pushing his chair out.

Within less than a heartbeat she could tell he understood what he had just said in his vexation with her, in front of everyone, and Galadriel reacted on instinct.

“But you have?!” She challenged, the you-have-not clear as day in her inflection, and jumped to her feet as well.

“I have been in that barn with you,” he bellowed, still the same frustration audible in his voice but she knew he had collected himself enough to utilize the cover she had provided him. “You may have willfully blinded yourself to any shred of sincerity or worthiness in these creatures, but I have seen it! There lies weakness within their affection – and it might be twisted but it is real, and we can exploit it!”

“You are deluding yourself,” she insisted. “Your plan will fail!”

“That is ENOUGH!” He roared, as loud and as angry as he had been since their fight in Eregion, and Bronwyn gasped across the table. “It is not your call! I am the king and I am decided. And if you disagree, you are free to leave and return to your kin and rot there as they do nothing to help us!”

Galadriel stared at him for a skipped-heartbeat, unsure if he was serious – if he was truly this furious with her or if he merely continued the path for disguising the slip of his tongue, she laid out for him, to its final conclusion. No matter what it was, Galadriel saw only one path forward herself. Anything else and she would have leapt right into his face.

She squared her jaw, felt her cheeks redden with anger and humiliation, pushed her chair away with a screech, and stomped from the room in an angry march, only to slam the door behind her in a way she had not since leaving Valinor as a young girl.

Galadriel fell into a run with the bang of the door still reverberating down the landing and across the staircase. She took those stairs like a wild filly, propelled by her own indignant fury.

How dare he speak to her thusly? How dare he speak to her like this in front of other people?! Even if it had been for cover, she was livid with him, with the audacity of it all. He is king?! He is? He might as well be – but over nothing at present and he would do well to remember it.

At the same time, she was terrified that she had just failed her one objective. That she had driven him into darkness with one last fight and he would turn around and set everything aflame – and it would have all been for nothing. What was she going to tell Mithrandir? How could she ever return to the Valar having failed like this? And still… still her anger at Halbrand outweighed the fear for herself. – Let them be mad at her, let them cast her out, even!

Nowhere had she agreed to be treated like this! In no way should she be made to allow Sauron to walk over her and take it all lying down like a demure little mouse! She should kill him herself! She should end this shoddy farce of a trial and explode the sodding creature where he lay on that altar until there was nothing left of him to send into the Void or anywhere else. The Valar might not know how to, but she would find a way. She was angry enough! Her madness could tear apart worlds. She felt Nenya sing with her rampancy, felt the strength that had been lent to her in Aman, vibrate through her entire being, gnawing at her insides. As if taunting her to use it.

She thought the last time she had been this unhinged was when she nearly annihilated him in Dol Guldur, with half a mind now to do it again. But somehow… somehow she got a hold of herself. Under any other circumstances, she would have faced off with Halbrand and tried once more to be rid of him. If not the fate of the entire universe depended on it, she would have at least left. But she had to stay, she had to try and make it work. She had to – and this wounded her probably most of all – swallow her own pride and her humiliation and extent her grace and understanding to Halbrand yet again.

She paced up and down her chambers close to hysterics for hours, unsure if she wanted to wail or laugh about her impossible situation. She kept on walking in circles until she left a trail in the carpet and waited for Halbrand to come and apologize to her. She at least expected that much. But he never came.

***

The sun had set over Osgeende when Galadriel finally had enough. She was not some maiden in a tower content with waiting for the dragon to deem it convenient to seek her out, so she took a deep breath, tied back her hair and marched down the corridor to go see the dragon herself.

She did knock, rather harshly, but she did not wait to hear him allow her entrance. She knew he was there, could feel his energy radiating the way she always could, and barged in the door. Halbrand, stoic and immovable, stood leaning against his desk – and he was wearing nothing but his breeches.

“I was awaiting your visit,” he said, his face stone as she recovered from the sight of his naked torso a little slower than she would have liked.

She was ready to tear him limb from limb with her bare hands just for that fact alone.

“I do not appreciate you talking to me like you did this afternoon,” she declared tightly and slammed the door behind her like a petulant child.

“And I do not appreciate your stubborn resolve to not see any reason just because it comes from me.” He pushed himself off of the table and rose to his full height, all imposing irritability.

“I should send you back to your master for all your insolence,” she grumbled.

“That is rich coming from you,” he huffed. “You completely undermined me in front of my council. If that is not insolence, what is?”

“I owe you no fealty,” she reminded him. “You are not my ruler.”

“This again.”

“Yes, this again.” She stepped further into the room. “Always this!”

“You need to learn to control yourself, if we are to succeed. You have to concede sometimes that I am right!”

“But you are not right!” She maintained, perfectly willing to rehash the whole conflict once over, if he insisted on it.

“Yes, I am,” he met her glowing embers with cold hard certainty, and it drove her half-mad, madder than had he resorted to screaming at her again. “You are just too deluded by your own hatred to see it.”

“Do you mean to speak now to the virtue of your sworn enemy?” She challenged mockingly. “Should you wish to endear me to Adar with all this talk of love he supposedly has for his abominations?”

“Far from it,” he scoffed.

“Then why? Why are you so insistent on this theory?”

“It isn’t a theory,” he promised. “It is the only way we can cut out the legs out from under him. I want to be rid of him so much more than you can fathom.”

“Why?”

“Why does it matter?”

Now was the first time since she had entered his chamber that he moved, away from her, as if to escape her line of questioning – which was how she knew where to push.

“If you expect me to follow you in this, you have to explain it to me.”

“Is it not enough that I tell you to?”

“You could tell me anything at all,” she said harshly, and was that not the crux of it all? “How could I ever know your true intent? – You always complain of my not trusting you, but you trust me just as little.”

“There is nothing to tell you,” he plead with her but his whole demeanor spoke another language.

“You lie.” This was the first time she was actually really sure of it, the first time she ever clearly saw his attempt at deception. Funnily, it was obvious not through the ease of his attempted manipulation but through what it seemed to cost him. “What happened, really, between you and Adar? Why do you hate him so?”

“Galadriel!” He warned, his patience wearing thin once more.

“I will not leave before you tell me,” she threatened – and then thought of an even greater threat: “Or I shall leave altogether.”

Halbrand groaned under his breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. Even before he finally said it, Galadriel realized that it was not gruesomeness he was hiding – but vulnerability.

“Because he was my friend,” Halbrand uttered, and nothing out of his mouth had ever made less sense to her.

“What?!”

Halbrand turned away from her, walked over to the window and stared into the night.

“As much a friend as there could have been one in those days,” he continued. “Back then, when I was still by Morgoth’s side, Adar– after he joined us, he was the only being I had any trust in, any sense of companionship, since leaving Aman behind me. His was the only presence that offered some respite. Morgoth was… terrifying and tantalizing. Searing my flesh and scorching my soul – but Adar was as kind as anyone in our place could have been. Morgoth, I think, had some idea setting him up at my side. He saw my weakness and he provided…”

Halbrand’s sentence fizzled out. He took a deep breath.

He got you a puppy, Galadriel thought, horrified.

“Some small solace,” Halbrand revealed. “But I learned the truth when Morgoth was defeated. – Adar blamed me for his fate, and he betrayed me. It was with his knife in my back as he struck me down that I understood how in all our years together, he had only been pretending, had only been biding his time before he could rid himself of me. He did not know I couldn’t be destroyed just so easily. But he wanted what I had for himself and now he dwells in Mordor, grasping for everything that was promised to me.”

Galadriel did not know what to do with this at all.

“He never loved me,” Halbrand confessed. “But he loves the orcs. Trust me at least on that. I can tell the difference.”

Galadriel was frozen to the spot and said nothing. For such a long time that when Halbrand turned around to her again, he looked almost afraid.

“Do you think me pathetic now, elf?”

She knew this would be a fate worse than destruction for him and the fact he would so openly reveal that to her, knocked the breath out of her lungs. He was anything but pathetic to her. She wanted to hold him with an urgency that shook her entire being – but hearing of her pity would strike him even harder than the disdain he expected.

“No,” she said merely, toneless. “But I believe you now.”

“At last,” he huffed, though there was no triumph in it. “Adar sought a blade between my shoulders for his satisfaction, and you are only pleased with me when I tear apart my very being and lay it out in front of you, bleeding and pitiful. – I seem an expert on creating my very own pandemonium.”

Galadriel took a deep breath, still perplexed with what had transpired.

“I take it you will follow my lead in this, then,” he asked, and she nodded.

“But I expect an apology,” she stipulated. “In front of your council.”

His features hardened with impressive speed. “I do not think so. I’ll have an apology of you though.”

“Never,” she declared, herself fiery just as quickly – it felt more comfortable than the alternative, too.

“I will not suffer it!” He raised his voice again. “I will have you show me the respect that I am owed.”

“And what of the respect that I am owed?”

“Galadriel, you are testing my patience.”

“What do you think you do to mine?!”

Halbrand growled – and before she knew it, he was with her, charging at her to push her by the shoulders and waist against his door and pinning her there, in a stark and distracting reminder of their fight in the woods.

“You are a brazen, contemptuous and vile creature,” he said, his breath hot on her face.

“Unhand me,” she spat and tried to wiggle out of his grasp, but he only tightened it, moving his hand from her shoulder to her neck, squeezing.

Not enough to bruise or seriously injure, just enough to make it sting – and shoot down her body right down to her core like a bolt of lightning.

“Do you really want that?” He breathed, dipping his head down to whisper close to her ear and every last hair on her body stood up. “Do you not burn to have me close like this? Your body betrays you, Galadriel.”

She panted but refused to give him the satisfaction. “I do not burn.”

He rasped a mirthless laugh, dark and malicious. “Do you think I don’t know what you do in the night?” She gasped; immediately embarrassed, and so aroused it threatened to make her knees give way. “Do you think I can not hear you mewl and moan behind your door? – Do you not think I know what you think of, when you chase that sweet release?”

“Do you think it is becoming of you to lurk outside my door in the shadows?” She pressed out from the throat he clasped, pushing her hands against his bare chest, his skin hot and fragrant, damp with the exertion of holding her down.

He turned his head even further in against her face, his lips connecting with her ears to a shudder she could not fight.

“Would you have me come in next time?”

She struggled again, a treacherous shiver running down her whole body. She was aflame and whipped her head away from him so he would not see. He used his thumb to rip it right back towards him and glared into her eyes with a desire bordering on violence dancing behind his. His thumb scratched torturously back down her skin, reaffirming his grip around her.

“Why do you hide yourself away from me?”

“Why do you expect?” She rasped and then almost moaned when he rolled his hips against hers, shoving his thigh between her legs harshly, against her heat, offering the friction she so desperately needed.

It took all she had not to seek it out.

“I want your acknowledgement, at least,” he demanded, low and dangerous. “This is real, I need you to say it. – Or must I debase myself day in and day out for scrabs of your attention?”

“How could the Dark Lord himself sink so low for such a contemptuous and vile creature?” She challenged.

“Not dark,” he bit out and clamped his fingers tighter around her neck.

“No?” She voiced, struggling for breath and turned her head, just enough to brush against his nose.

He made a helpless little sound, almost like a whimper, loosening his grip on her as he leaned in impossibly closer. Their lips nearly touched – but instead of kissing her, he held her in place by her hip, digging into her flesh and he whispered: “Before our time together comes to a close, whenever that may be, you will submit to me, body and soul, and you will do it willingly.”

“Or maybe you will find in me a new master,” Galadriel muttered, like he must have known she was going to, and then managed to free one of her arms from in between them, flung it up to his head and grabbed a fistful of his hair to yank his head back hard enough to break it, had he really been a mere human.

He winced and she felt him hard between her legs, rutting against her on what must’ve been pure instinct. She lowered her voice to an ugly murmur, delighting in his temporary incapacity, in her power over him.

“Stronger than the foundations of the earth,” she continued, seeing stars behind her eyes from the way he was moving his body against hers as if he could not help it at all, “beautiful and terrible. Maybe, before our time is out, you will bend to me,” she hissed: “Sauron.”

He snarled, like an animal, and more forceful and quicker than she could have anticipated, he moved his body, so he could wrap one hand around the back of her neck while the other covered her ribcage, squeezing, bruising the skin under her bosom and then Galadriel moaned only half in pain when he bent over and bit the flesh of her neck just below her earlobe hard enough to draw blood.

“Go,” he ordered roughly, just a moment later, and released her fully from his grip, leaving her cold and wanting. “Leave right this second before I forget myself.”

She did, but it took everything she had.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWELVE: THE DARK TOWER

Galadriel returned to her chambers and willed herself to sleep. It was hard to come by. So hard in fact, that in the end, she drew from Nenya to as good as remove herself from consciousness. She awoke a moment later, feeling rested and tempered – but still the night did not seem too far behind her.

Carnal desire was a peculiar thing for elves. As a young woman, Galadriel had known passion, had been curious and hungry and delighted in the way her body could experience and provide pleasure. Arguably, her marriage with Celeborn was brought on more by a wish to explore than to necessarily be tied to any one being until the end of days – but that fact had never been to her detriment either. She had fallen truly in love with him in time and the first couple of centuries, they were enjoying their explorations together.

Then, as was common for elves, their physical relationship calmed down as their youthful courtship became a partnership, easy and soft and reassuring. It only rekindled after he was returned to her, after she had thought he had died in the war. It was in that renaissance that their daughter Celebrían was conceived and born. After that, Celeborn and Galadriel slowly returned to their previous slow union, to a mutually beneficial connection that was pleasant but largely devoid of carnal pleasure.

At present, her world was turned upside down, though. Whatever she had felt for Halbrand, back before all that followed, when she still thought he was just a low man from the Southlands, was paling in the face of how she desired him now. And even back then, she had wanted him more than she could remember ever wanting Celeborn. She only understood later that it was not just Halbrand, but the creature beneath she wanted, because even then she had felt his power and that drew her to him even without her knowing. Now, she knew almost all, and so much more than Halbrand himself was aware of, and she wanted him with a force that seemed out of the universe.

It was only thanks to her long, long life that she was even able to pull herself away from the brink as he had offered her a path to in his room. Had she stayed a moment longer, she would have handed herself over, all consequences be damned. The last time she was this strung out was literal ages ago, as a young, young woman, still in Valinor, only beginning to discover her own pleasures.

Maybe it would be smart to give in, a small voice in the back of her head whispered, bind him to his human body. But she did not trust herself to believe this was strategy rather than self-delusion. An attempt to allow her to give herself over to her selfish desires, and in the process seal her own fate.

This trial will reveal much about you as well, Mithrandir had told her, or something like it. And she could do without knowing that if given enough chances and tempted sorely enough, she would lie with her biggest foe, the enemy of all the worlds, the creature who was responsible for her brother’s death in this world and millennias of anguish in the real one.

She did not want to know herself capable of this – but at the same time… she was teetering on the edge of it every second in his presence and he knew it now. Knew it fully. He had demanded she acknowledge it, to say it out loud. Obviously, their interaction afterwards had satisfied that need.  In any case, the next time he saw her, he was gloating.

***

It was later in the morning. Galadriel had postponed her leaving her room to the last possible moment, and when she finally opened her door, he gave her a start by just walking towards it.

“I came to fetch you,” he told her, a glint in his eye. “I reconvened the council and I would like to request your attendance, Commander.”

Galadriel felt shocked to realize that she was blushing, the impressions of the night still fresh in her mind. Holding his gaze was impossible, a whirlwind of warring emotions twisting around in her chest. Half of her wanted to wrestle him down, the other half wanted to wrestle him down. She knew she could do neither.

“You were quiet tonight,” he murmured as he walked her down the corridor.

He knew. He knew it all.

“I do not wish to discuss this,” she told him tightly, and kept her eyes forward.

“No, I did not expect you would,” he said – but if sound could have smirked, it would have. “We have other pressing matters to attend to in any case.”

He opened the door for her and let her enter the hall first. At the table sat already the rest of the council, now joined by Elendil’s eldest son, and they all looked at her with pure awkwardness – even Anárion, who had not even been there for their shouting match the previous day.

Halbrand continued walking towards the table, so Galadriel did the same, trying to tell herself that she was too old to feel as embarrassed and humiliated as she did. Then Halbrand stood in front of his chair and when she tried to sit down, he kept her from it by a flick of his wrist. Maybe he was going to apologize to her now and that was why he wanted her to remain standing. She turned her head around to him. But he surprised her. Because neither did he offer her any apology, nor did he make her lay out her own.

“We must apologize to you,” he said to the table and Galadriel’s eyes widened. “As most of you have witnessed yesterday, Commander Galadriel and I do not see eye to eye on all things. But we discussed the matter further in private and have jointly decided to go forth with my plan of attacking Adar’s cradle.” Galadriel drew in a sharp breath, but he went right on. “Under the condition that we set up a contingency plan, which the Commander graciously suggested.”

Galadriel eyed him warily because he knew as well as she did, that she had done no such thing. Halbrand pointed to the map again, now to the plains of North Nurn. And once more proved himself a true politician in every way.

“Should Adar not deem it worthy to protect his new orcs, Anárion will be leading a group of soldiers to lay waste to the crops here. If not his new soldiers, Adar will need to secure the sustenance of his old ones. – If it becomes clear on our mission that he will not act in Mordor, Galadriel will give you,” he inclined his head to Elendil’s son, “the command to proceed.”

Galadriel was shocked. Not just because Halbrand had obviously come up with this infuriatingly decent alternative plan on his own but because he had just given her the credit for it. She tried to keep her face impassive though, for no one else in the room but the two of them knew this.

“But is it not very far?” Anárion wondered. “How will we know to act?”

“Galadriel has ways to communicate,” Halbrand replied and Elendil nodded. “And furthermore, ways to be heard far and wide, if she so chooses.”

Halbrand glanced down at her hand, at her ring. She nodded to Anárion.

“When will we set out?” Arondir asked.

“As soon as the elves arrive,” Halbrand said. “In the meantime, we will ready our troops.”

Halbrand gave everyone save for Galadriel, who was set to continue helping with training, their own tasks in preparation of their strike against Adar and sent them on their way. Him and her made up the rear as everyone dispersed out of the hall, walking quietly side by side.

“Thank you for this,” she told him, even though it felt strange on her lips to thank him for anything.

“It was not an apology,” he reminded her but when she looked at him, he was smiling a little, his eyes warm and teasing.

She chuckled, just a bit. “I would never have dared to assume.”

He stopped her, just before the threshold, by grabbing her wrist. Then he turned her towards him and put his large hand on her shoulder.

“Let us put aside our quarrels for now and focus on defeating our enemy, alright?” He suggested. “You will find new faults in me to pick apart after this is all done, I am certain.”

Galadriel breathed out in mild exasperation and then rolled her eyes, yet she still nodded, and he grinned. But only for a second before it passed again, replaced with something else, something smoldering that reminded her of the night before and made her skin prick.

Halbrand wet his lips absentmindedly, tilted his head and moved his hand from her shoulder to the side of her face ever so gently, eliciting a sigh she could barely suppress. His fingers ghosted across her cheek until they found a strand of her hair and he twisted it around, moving his hand to her neck in the process. Then his fingers brushed the bruise he had left there the night before with his teeth and Galadriel winced at the jolt of lust and pain that surged through her at the touch.

“Maybe you should pick dresses with a higher collar for the next couple of days,” Halbrand mused and then dropped his hand. “I’ll see you on the field.”

***

Until the elves – one and a half weeks later – finally joined their camp, Halbrand would find more little reasons to touch her every now and again. It was always inconspicuous enough. He would pull out her chair for when they sat down for dinner and brush her shoulder. Or bump her elbow as they had easy conversation with the rest of the Lord Mayor’s guest and Galadriel was almost too distracted to note how Halbrand would chew for a very long time on one single bite and then spirit most of his plate’s contents away into his napkin when no one was looking. Or he would seek her out when she was alone – even if he kept this limited to the daytime and everywhere outside of either of their bedchambers – like he was doing right now, giving a flimsy reason to be close to her.

“I just ran into Theo looking for a stool so he could help fasten the clasps on your armour,” he told her as he sauntered into the little command tent, they had set up next to the elven encampment by the Númenorian barracks on the wheat field outside of the city. “I told him I was going to take care of it. – Should he not reach high enough to do so without the aid? The lad has grown much since we have come here.”

“I stood on my tiptoes,” Galadriel said. “He was shaking so hard. He is worried about his mother, so I sent him to be with her. He wants so much to be a good squire but that is more important.”

They were going to set out for Mordor today. The whole town and the soldier’s dwellings were busy with their efforts to get everything ready for success.

“I can still order Bronwyn to remain behind,” Halbrand said and crossed the tent to step behind Galadriel and handed her her breast plate as he got the back ready and fiddled with the straps.

He was already decked out in his own suit of armour, still the one that he had been provided with in Númenor while she had collected an elven set in Eregion.

“She would never forgive you,” Galadriel said. “She wants to do her part. I’ll protect her.”

“I would rather you were not distracted,” he murmured, clasping the armour together by their leather bands, very much distracting her at present with the way he kept running his fingers over her shoulders. “If we are to rid ourselves of those witches, I need you focused.”

“When we make it into that tower, I know how to handle myself,” Galadriel told him firmly. “Do not underestimate me.”

“I don’t,” he promised. “I merely wish to succeed.”

“I am aware,” she said and thought to ask of what came after, if they indeed would complete their plan of destroying Adar.

But Galadriel expected that would be one of the things he had promised she would find fault with on the other side of their mission, and she did not want to fight him, not today with so much on the line.

“I promise I will do my part and make sure that Theo gets his mother back alive,” she reassured Halbrand as he was done with his work.

She saw him nod from the corner of her eye and expected him to step away, now that the task was done, yet he remained where he was. Hovering close. There was a soft clang of steel on steel when he drew her in by her waist, his gloves clanking against her back plate, and he wrapped that hand around her stomach next, pulling her flush against him, as close as his own armour allowed. Meanwhile, he rested his head against hers, so close she could feel his nose against the backside of her ear where her skin was bare to him as her hair was braided down and out of the way.

There was nothing forceful about the way he held her, nothing of the hunger or will to claim that she knew from him from before, but it rendered her breathless all the same. It was intimate, in a way she had not fully expected him even capable of, in a way that made her eyes sting and her heart clamp up with longing – and that new knowledge bore deep.

“Promise me you will be careful,” he whispered, so close to her ear that his breath tickled her but instead of a chuckle, she shuddered.

“You too,” she heard herself say, entirely unbidden, and before she could stop herself.

Halbrand rasped a laugh and then let go of her softly. “I will be fine. Adar cannot kill me, not like he tried to before. Besides, he does not know who I really am.”

Galadriel steadied herself, now that he was moving away from her – and he gave no indication the moment had ever even happened, so she opted to pretend the same.

They exited the tent together and she stood by his side as he swore in their soldiers. As well as he listened when she instructed the elves who were going to lead the charge on the cradle, helmed by Elendil. Only ten of them would come with Halbrand, Arondir, Bronwyn and Galadriel onto the mountain pass to advance on the tower from its back, unseen.

Half of the remaining Southern recruits would be under Anárion’s command and the most skilled of them would be joining his father and the elves. It was a solid plan, if not a guaranteed victory – and as they started their procession through the streets of Osgeende out to the bridge across the Anduin, the faces of the people come to see them off told of as much.

They all halted one last time, when Galadriel and Halbrand had arrived just at the city gate, so everyone could say their final goodbyes to their loved ones who had followed their trail from the town square. Galadriel had no one safe for Swete to really say goodbye to, and they were not kin. Still, the girl was crying a little, and so Galadriel dismounted from her horse and gave her a hug.

“I will return,” she promised her.

“I hope the band will hold,” Swete said, touching Galadriel’s braid, which of course, was her work. “I do not want your hair to get in the way.”

“It won’t, you did good,” Galadriel said – and just in case something would go wrong and for whatever reason, she would never see the girl again, she added: “You are good. Good and true and wonderful. You deserve everything that is bright and lovely in this world.”

In that moment Galadriel had entirely forgotten that the girl was long, long dead and they had never really spoken in the true course of history. She did not have time to become truly aware of that fact either, because a few paces behind her, Theo was screaming at Arondir.

“You can not let her go, please,” the boy pulled at the leather tunic sleeve of the elf’s under-armour. “Arondir, you must tell her to stay! She will die!”

“Theo, calm yourself,” Bronwyn plead, trying to pick her half-grown son off of Arondir. “I have to go, I want to go.”

“And leave me here alone?!” Theo cried out.

“Everything will be alright, I have Arondir to protect me,” Bronwyn promised.

“But you are just a woman!” Theo insisted.

“And so, what if I am? – Have I not fought for us before? Are there not other women warriors in our numbers?”

“But they are not my mother,” Theo sniffed.

“Ah, but they are called to serve just the same as I am,” Bronwyn said and brushed her son’s hair out of his forehead softly, in a manner that made Galadriel’s heart yearn for her daughter and granddaughter. “I am doing this for us, Theo. I am doing my part.”

“I promise you, I will not let any harm come to your mother,” Arondir reassured the boy. “I will guard her with my life.”

Theo sniffled again and Bronwyn wrapped him up in a tight hug – and when she released him, Galadriel could tell he was already beginning to feel ashamed of his emotional display and tried to posture himself grander than he was, and more collected.

“I shall go see that he is not alone,” Swete said, squeezed Galadriel’s hands one last time and then went to stand beside Theo as Bronwyn mounted her horse and blew him one last kiss.

When Galadriel turned around to get on her own steed again, she saw Swete take Theo’s hand, and saw him clasp it closer to his side.

Most other goodbyes were tearful, if not as dramatic. The only ones not crying seemed to be Isildur and his sister Eärien. Isildur looked proud but at the same time chagrined that he could not fight alongside his father and brother. Eärien looked like she wanted to set the whole world on fire. It was obvious she remained opposed to every step her family was taking in Middle Earth, but Galadriel had neither time nor interest at present to try and befriend or appease the girl. Should they return triumphant, she was sure Halbrand was going to find a way to win her over to their side.

Elendil waved to his children a final time, and then fell into step next to Galadriel, who inclined his head at him. Then they rode and their track towards the mountains, and the darkness which lay beyond, began.

***

Arondir led them through a winding, narrow path between the mountains and they received periodical news from two elven scouts Halbrand had sent ahead, whether their approach remained unnoticed still. Above them, the volcanic ash cloud hung low and thick, casting the world into shadows.

“Another hour yet, then we’re past the mountain and Elendil’s host won’t be concealed from detection any longer,” Arondir told Galadriel as they rode side by side at the front for a time. “We will slip away when they emerge and take the mountain pass.”

Galadriel nodded and then Arondir looked like he wished to say more, but he cut himself off.

“What is it?” Galadriel asked, sensing the other elf’s unease.

“Should we not,” he finally voiced, “leave the humans behind? – Maybe Theo is right, maybe it is too dangerous. Maybe this should be a task left to the elves. They are so fragile. King Halbrand… and Bronwyn.”

“I doubt they would suffer being left,” Galadriel said with a somewhat sad smile. “Halbrand is too proud and Bronwyn too brave. – Better to keep an eye on them than risk them setting out on their own just to prove a point.”

“It is just…” Arondir paused, deliberated, and then decided to continue, albeit while lowering his voice. “How do you live with it? This constant worry? – And knowing that no matter what you do, eventually their lives will end, even if violence or injury never touch them. How can we love them the way that we do, if we are cursed to lose them? How is it possible?”

Arondir did not even question whether or not him and Galadriel were the same. To him, he loved Bronwyn and Galadriel loved Halbrand, they both loved a mortal – though he was wrong on one account regarding Galadriel and Halbrand. She was not worried to lose him, not in the slightest, because a mortal, he was not. Arondir on the other hand, he was devastated with concern. And he did not know Galadriel did not share in that anguish.

“I keep my distance,” she told him, obviously a bold faced lie, and hoped it would not sound like a condemnation of his choice to be close to Bronwyn – because she could hardly fault him for that, considering that every single night within the last few weeks she had been about a hair’s breadth away from sleeping with Sauron.

She figured, she could relate to Arondir in one regard, though. And she would not try to deceive him about her feelings for Halbrand either; she had accepted that some of their relationship must have been too obvious to hide – not if Halbrand himself would put her by his side in front of his council and speak for both of them as if his empty kingdom was theirs together.

“It is harder in many ways, staying away, because he is right there, right in my grasp,” Galadriel told Arondir, being as honest as she could be under the circumstances, “harder keeping away, than it would be to just give in and allow myself to love him fully.” She sighed. “But keeping that boundary uncrossed will make it much easier in the future.”

“I wonder if that is really true,” Arondir mused, “because even if we didn’t… I do not think I would love her less. It isn’t something I can fight or control.”

“We do not get to choose who we fall in love with,” Galadriel told him, the weight of a lifetime of knowledge suddenly behind the old adage as she finally allowed herself to admit it, at least in thought; she had loved Sauron all this time.

Hated him, wanted him dead, all true, too – but she had loved him all the same, beneath it all. That is why her hatred ran so deep. It was built on love. Not that it mattered. Not that it changed anything.

“So, we just endure it? Love and lose and live with it?” Arondir asked.

“I do not think there is another way,” Galadriel replied. “They go before us, that is the way of the world.”

They rode in silence after that for a while. Right until one of the scouts returned and alerted them that their convoy had been spotted. This made them pick up the pace and eventually, Halbrand and Arondir decided that it would be best to sneak off into the mountains a little earlier than planned. It would only prolong their journey by about an hour but would mean less news of Galadriel and Halbrand both headed to Mordor could hopefully make its way to Adar.

Elendil and Anárion said their farewells and marched their troops onward, now alert that they may encounter resistance upon their encroaching on the dark lands surrounding Orodruin, while Arondir charted the path into the mountain, leading Galadriel, Halbrand, Bronwyn and the ten elves along.

They marched across small footpaths and along steep cliff walls and Galadriel was glad that Bronwyn had thought to have dark grey woolen cloaks made for them all which helped disguise them from view. All that fabric did not help in the climb of course, but at least it shielded against the cold. It had gotten so bitter cold in the Southlands. They had not seen a single ray of sunshine for close to five months now.

“Look what they have made out of our home,” Bronwyn said, sadness battling it out with fury on her face.

“Better not to dwell on it,” Halbrand told her. “Better to avenge it – and reverse it, if we can.”

Galadriel wondered what he meant by that – but then their group pressed on.

***

Finally, after what seemed like a grueling eternity, they rounded a cliffside, and Adar’s tower came into view. It was not as grand or half as imposing as Barad-dûr had been, but imposing and grand enough.

“How did they manage to raise this up in such short a time?” Bronwyn wondered aghast and appalled, but not without a certain sense of wonder. “They must have built all day and night.”

“It is not the work of just orcs alone,” Halbrand said grimly. “This is the witches’ doing.”

“Dark magic,” supplied Galadriel.

Bronwyn scrunched up her nose. “Argh, that smell again. It reeks.”

“It’s sulfur,” Galadriel said. “And orcs.”

“Come on, let us not dally,” Arondir urged on. “We should take cover somewhere at the foot of the mountain, close enough to strike fast.”

They descended down another tiny path, single-file, and dispersed the group a little so as to not rouse attention and so it took another hour until their whole party had made it down to the ground, hiding behind splintered rocks, just a short sprint away from the backside of the tower.

“Night will fall soon,” Arondir murmured, looking to the sliver of visible pink skies on the horizon. “Elendil must be close to the cradle now. – Best be ready to move at a moment’s notice.”

Then he turned to Bronwyn and Galadriel turned away to give them some privacy but could not help overhear them.

“I need you to be safe,” Arondir whispered to Bronwyn. “Promise me. No unnecessary risks. Let the other elves and I proceed uninterrupted. Stay behind me, at all times. – Promise me, Bronwyn.”

“I will, I promise,” she said and then Galadriel heard them kissing.

Next to her hovered Halbrand, equally as stoically staring ahead, keeping his eyes on the tower. But between them, he took her gloved hand with his and squeezed it lightly.

“Look,” he said suddenly and dropped her fingers to point at the far side of the tower, where three orcs emerged.

The one leading them yowled a deafening scream. “To the weapons, you filthy maggots! TO BATTLE! THE ELVES ARE MARCHING ON THE BREEDING GROUNDS.”

“It worked,” Bronwyn almost squealed behind Galadriel. “Your plan worked, my lord!”

Galadriel did not have to look at Halbrand to know the exact shade of smugness on his face.

“I told you so,” he muttered to her because she would not turn around to behold it.

Galadriel shushed him and together they waited with bated breath, watching hosts of orcs emerge from all sides. From the tower, from barracks around, even from the ground. They all ran, frenzied, decked out in crude armour and rusty swords. And they were so loud Galadriel barely heard herself think. Finally, the last of them had run so far off that they could not have stopped them getting into the tower, even if they had become aware of the approach.

Left to guard Adar’s dwelling, were five orcs manning the entrance, this was what they saw as they – shrouded in shadows – stalked around the backside of the circular tower to the front. Galadriel gestured at the two archers among the elves, took a deep breath – and then gave the command.

It all happened very fast: the archers charged forward, and the rest of the elves followed, swords drawn. Two of the orcs fell with an arrow in their heads, then so did a third. One fell to Galadriel’s blade and the last one managed to keep Arondir and another elf on their toes for a few seconds, but then succumbed as well.

“Quick now,” said Galadriel, quickly falling into the adrenaline rush and quick-thinking pace of combat. “And quiet.”

She held open the door for Arondir, Halbrand and Bronwyn to slip through and then made them push to the sides of the entrance to let the archers advance first. There was a sound somewhere overhead and Halbrand put a finger on his lips as they all pressed close to the walls, staying in the darkness.

It took a second, even for Galadriel’s eyes, to grow accustomed to the dim light. Once they had, she saw that they were standing on the bottom of a giant staircase, its end nary in sight. Then Halbrand scuffled to her side and whispered, so no one else could hear: “How many heartbeats can you hear? Up at the top, there are at least ten. That must be him and his guard.”

Galadriel focused and listened. “Thirty,” she muttered, then listened again. “Fifty, give or take, between us down here and Adar at the top.”

“Aware of us yet?” Halbrand asked and looked concentrated himself. “I do not believe so.”

“Me neither,” Galadriel agreed.

“Let’s change that,” he said under his breath and looked almost giddy with the prospect.

“Why?” She hissed.

“Better to draw them all out at once and have them come down to us,” he replied, “than to wait and fight them on the climb up. – That is a lot of stairs.”

And she had to give it to him, he was right about this. She nodded her agreement, and then inclined her head at him to lead the charge.

He did, and before she knew it, they were making a lot of noise and then even more when the orcs in the tower took note and came barreling down from their respective levels. Just like Halbrand had said they would – a few even tripped over each other in their rush, effectively taking themselves out. Then when the first of the orcs reached them, the fighting began in earnest and Galadriel’s training and experience took over, blurring time and space.

She was only dimly aware of her party, saw Halbrand strike and fight with an ease that must have really clued in any thorough observer that he could not be entirely human, but as it was, everyone had their hands and minds full with other things.

The only thing Galadriel did spare some diverging attention to was Bronwyn. But she did as Arondir had made her promise, she stayed behind him and from what Galadriel could tell – ducking from blows and dealing out her own – Bronwyn had to raise her own sword in defense only once. She did split an orc’s ugly head with that blow, too, which Galadriel wished she had the time to cheer the other woman on for.

Eventually, they began to drive the remaining orcs up the stairs, using them to their advantage because being rushed up blind and backwards as they were, the orcs could not make use of their high ground. All except one, who managed to strike down an elf. Galadriel whipped around to see Bronwyn run to his lifeless body, feel for a pulse and then sadly shake her head. The immediate grief and fury Galadriel felt, propelled her onwards and upwards. The last three orcs standing, she killed all by herself.

Then came the running up the stairs. She managed but only barely – and noticed that Bronwyn was falling behind. It did not matter in the end, because when Bronwyn caught up with them, panting and exhausted, they were still in front of the closed tar-black portal to the top of the tower where Adar was hiding out. It was a massive hindrance, with spikes coming out of it in rows, making it a challenge to even find a place to safely try and get it open.

Galadriel, Halbrand and Arondir all pushed against the door with precious little room to apply pressure, and Galadriel could tell even Halbrand was getting winded, using all his strength, but the door was unyielding, fortified by dark magic.

“They are hexing it right now, from the other side,” Halbrand muttered under his breath to Galadriel, and she nodded, she could hear the incantations. Halbrand leaned even further in. “Distract the others.”

He nodded over his shoulder to Arondir and the rest, and Galadriel knew he was going to draw from what was decidedly not human in him, his own dark magic. She could think of nothing better to do than cry out in agony and pretend she had hurt herself on one of the spikes and she wailed, drawing attention long enough for Halbrand to mutter his own incantation in Black Speech, undoubtedly the language the witches chanted in on the other side of the barrier.

Finally, and with a violent, crushing blow, the door opened and immediately four orcs pounced on them. Halbrand decapitated one right away. One suffered an arrow into his brain through the eye, two were engaged with the rest of the elves as Galadriel set her sights on the witches. They were standing with their eyes closed, still muttering curses and spells. But to believe they were lost to the world, was a mistake.

“Adar!” Halbrand called out as he spotted the creature, hiding behind what he must have fashioned as a throne for himself; a monstrosity carved out of black stone.

“You!” Adar exclaimed over the clashing of swords. “I know who you are now!”

Halbrand ran towards the uruk, screaming, as behind him, the last two orcs crumbled to the floor, one after the other.

Then three things happened at the same time: One of the witches opened her eyes, immediately focused on Bronwyn whom she must have taken for the easiest target. Arondir saw it and charged at the witch and then, a blink later, a second one ripped open her eyes and up her hand and pushed the elf with an unseen force, right against the heavy portal.

Galadriel looked on horrified and temporarily frozen to the spot as Arondir hung suspended for half a second, as if hovering in the air – but then Bronwyn screamed a terrible scream as three spikes protruded through Arondir’s chest. Bronwyn ran over to him and yanked him from the door.

But Arondir would hit the floor hard, wincing, because Bronwyn could not catch him. For she, along with Halbrand and Galadriel was next whipped up into the air, hovering a few feet above the ground as the five witches banded together, formed a line in front of Adar standing shoulder to shoulder, and bound the intruders, as well as the other elves to the spot with their combined magic.

“Galadriel, use the ring,” Halbrand commanded, fighting against the bind as she did the same.

She did not need to be told twice.

Galadriel drew, not only from the power of Nenya but the strength of the Valar inside her, the strength that could break apart this very reality because she had created it. And she screamed and focused all of her rage, all of that fury, all of her might on those five women.

She shrieked and growled at the same time as she felt something very foreign take over her body, her shadow-self, her most dark self, ironically radiating the most blinding light. She could see herself glow unnaturally with it, as if hovering over her own body, the brightness spreading like a wave made of daggers. Of pure, undiluted destruction. Another push forward until she forgot who she was. All that mattered now was that these witches died!

She grabbed all of it, all of the powers in her grasp – and then she blew them apart, bit by bit, eviscerating them down to their bones until they were dust, their agonized wails still echoing through the room as Halbrand and Bronwyn and the elves crushed to the ground as the bind loosened upon their ends.

Galadriel sunk back onto her full feet, returning to herself and when she could see straight again, Adar was running towards the balcony. She started after him, just like Halbrand did.

Adar tripped, catching himself by a hair on the balustrade on his balcony, high above the dark ground that seemed nothing more than a softly glowing red and black pit beneath him. Galadriel could feel the elven warriors fall in behind her. Adar was hopelessly outnumbered. And he knew it.

“No, no,” he cowered, sinking to his knees and Galadriel brought her sword up.

Somehow, she knew what was coming. And could not think past this next moment.

“This man is not who he claims to be,” said Adar, pleading with Galadriel. “I know him! He is S–“

Before he could finish the name, Galadriel rammed her sword with all her might into his chest, twisted it and pulled it back out, streaked with black. Adar looked at her in sheer shock, then at Halbrand, spluttered black blood from his mouth – and was dead.

Galadriel turned around, half anticipating horrified faces on the elves because they had pieced together what sentence Galadriel would not let Adar live to speak – but they looked only like soldiers who had completed a mission.

And then all of them together remembered what had happened as Bronwyn howled from inside the tower, cradling Arondir’s body close. Galadriel wanted to rush to her side on instinct as the other elves did, but Halbrand held her back by the arm, pointing down at the ground below – to where she could make out a hoard of orcs encircling Elendil and their other warriors in the distance by the breeding grounds.

“We need to let the orcs know it’s over,” Halbrand told her. “Tell them to retreat.”

“How?” Galadriel asked, not able to think straight with everything that had just happened.

“Make them fear you,” Halbrand answered calmly but with urgency, and inclined his head towards Adar, bleeding out on the floor before them. “Show them that you defeated their leader. – Use the ring.”

Galadriel was too much still under the influence of pure power to even question it.

She sidestepped Halbrand, reached below and picked up Adar’s corpse as if he weighed nothing, held him in front of her stomach and bellowed with that voice that was not hers. It echoed far and wide across the plain – otherworldly, unnaturally, terrifying and inescapable.

Beneath them, the fighting stopped immediately.

“YOUR FATHER IS DEAD,” Galadriel’s voice rang out. “FLEE NOW FROM THIS PLACE, ORCS – OR YOU SHALL BE NEXT!”

Then she flung Adar over the railing and watched transfixed and at once entirely removed as the body fell and fell and fell until he landed on the cold hard ground with a disgusting crack that reverberated in her own skull.

At first the orcs rallied, made for the tower as if to avenge their master, completely disengaging from Elendil’s army, but then Galadriel lifted her hands and willed a burst of energy to break forth from her very being. A violent current exploded from Galadriel and below, the orcs fell, felt her power knock the wind out of them and their legs out from under them – and only then, did they flee. They ran to the east, to the mountains, and even into the ground.

Mechanically, drained, Galadriel turned around, all that power dissipating from her and behind her, in the shadows just inside the tower, stood Halbrand and looked at her with a mixture of reverence and greed.

“So, Mordor is yours, then,” she muttered, half stumbling past him, now uneasy on her feet and she knew this was going to be a problem but that was far from her mind, which was slow to clear.

Galadriel let herself get drawn to even more pain, as if by a magnet. Bronwyn kept crying, whispering in hushed tones to the man in her arms whose body was red with blood, way too much blood. Galadriel approached them and the elves who stood by, made way for her.

“Galadriel, please help,” Bronwyn whined.

Arondir shook his head, just a little, and then coughed up a bit of blood as he turned his head to look at his commander.

“I found a way,” he murmured, gathering his last strength. “I found a way to endure it – you sim…” He stopped, took a breath, fought to get it out. “You simply go before them.”

Then he smiled and let his head fall back onto Bronwyn’s arm, locking his gaze only on her, looking upon her so sweetly as if he was coming home after a long, long journey.

“I love you,” he breathed. “Now… I’ll love you forever.”

And Arondir’s eyes opened wide, went out of focus, his mouth fell open in a last shuddering breath – and he was gone.

Bronwyn’s piercing cry of sheer, naked agony would have been enough to send Galadriel to her knees or retching in any other scenario. But now she was still dizzy and held on to the little voice in her head that screamed and screamed: This is not real. This is not how it happened. Arondir did not die here. This is not how it happened!

She still walked backwards, her sight dimming, as if she was falling into a deep, dark pit. Nenya burned on her finger and the strength of the Valar felt like an anchor still pulling at her, still dragging her down, though out of reach now, depleted as she was.

Everything went hazy, unfocused. She just wanted to get away. Away from Bronwyn and her pain, away from the elves, away from herself most of all. She moved blindly further and further back – until she hit something solid and Halbrand’s steady hands closed around her shoulders.

“I am so sorry,” he said as he turned her around and drew her against him into as tight a hug as their armour allowed. “I am so, so sorry.”

She put her arms around him just to have something to hold onto, as he cupped the back of her head, pulling her ever closer.

“I am sorry,” Halbrand repeated.

Galadriel, standing stiff and lost in his embrace, felt nothing – and that was the worst part of all.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ONE TO LOVE AND ONE TO FEAR

Elendil returned with his men to the foot of the dark tower, having suffered only a few losses. The wounded were taken care of as a section of the elven soldiers cleared the perimeter and stood guard to make sure no orcs would seek revenge. But Galadriel knew she had put the fear of the One into them. They would not return any time soon. It felt a hollow victory. All of it.

She could tell Elendil had questions, about what was to come next, about how to proceed, most of all about the powers she had displayed which won them this battle, but before he could ask even one of them, they were interrupted by commotion nearby and Galadriel quickly recognised Bronwyn’s voice at the heart of it. She started moving, as if pulled on a string, followed it to the source, still as if walking through a haze. Far, far removed from everything and everyone.

“You cannot just take him with you!” The mortal woman was shoving an elf from Arondir’s lifeless body but then another one dragged her away and held her back. She was screaming ever louder, and yelled for Galadriel when she saw her.

“They want to take his body away!” Bronwyn sounded so broken, so furious. “They say as soon as you release them, they will return to the High King and take Arondir with them!”

If Galadriel had been able to feel anything but this heavy, terrible numbness, her heart would have broken. Because she could tell her nothing else.

“He belongs with his kin,” she said. “He is to be taken to receive his last rites.”

“But can they not give them here?!” Bronwyn cried, begged. “You cannot leave me without even so much as a grave to mourn him at.”

Galadriel took a deep breath and tried to muster all the tenderness she could. None of it was real, she was not capable of it. Still, she gave the soldier who held Bronwyn the command to release her and walked towards the woman. Then she put her hand softly on her shoulder and lowered her voice.

“You have not seen an elf die before, have you?”

Bronwyn sniffled, and shook her head. 

“Their spirit’s pass on, return to the Halls of Mandor, far, far away from here. And once they are gone their bodies quickly fade. – Arondir is gone and his body will make it to Eregion but not much further. Even if it remained here, it would turn to ashes before the month is out. You would have nothing to bury.”

“That is cruel,” Bronwyn said tonelessly.

“It is the way of our people,” Galadriel remained. “I am sorry if that causes you more grief, but this is how it has always been.”

Fresh tears streamed down Bronwyn’s face but she fought to keep her composure, fought to keep upright, fought to say one last, cutting thing: “You are cruel.” 

Then she broke away from the elves that had gathered, and looked upon all of them with disgust: “You care only about yourselves, the lot of you! – Curse you all! Curse you to the pits.”

And Bronwyn ran into the tower, likely to hide herself away. Galadriel could hear her sobs grow fainter but not stop, never stop. She could not even feel shame. Instead, she let herself get swept up by the practicalities, by the matters at hand, functioning like an automaton. 

Quickly thereafter, she released the elves and saw them off, safe for twenty-and-five to remain and help keep guard. She watched Halbrand confer with Elendil from afar, heard them decide that it was best to hold off on anything further until the morning. And she did not even complain when it was agreed upon that the rest of the human host should rest and sleep in the safety of the abandoned tower. 

She was loath to return into the wretched building, all the walls stirring with dark magic, weighing even heavier on her than the ring did around her finger, but she had no energy to fight it.

She followed them inside like a pale ghost, lost in the current of her apathy. She sank down against a wall where they made a huge, empty hall with cold black floors their camp, sat there, listened impassively as the wounded Númenorions and Southoner recruits were healed, moaning and gasping, and watched as sleep slowly took the rest of them, one by one. Would that she was as lucky as them, and able to sleep.

She had no idea how much time passed, everything felt faint and unfocused and even as Halbrand finally found her, and sat down beside her, she was barely aware of him.

“Galadriel?” He murmured.

“I do not wish to talk,” she whispered and kept staring ahead.

He held his peace then – but still kept watch at her side all night. It elicited no emotion inside her. She was devoid of any feeling, empty and hollow as that forsaken tower. There was nothing left of her, the Valar’s strength and the ring had taken all she had. Worst of all they had shown her all the power she craved, all that might. She knew with them, she could rule kingdoms and put Sauron and maybe even Morgoth to shame. They called to her even now and she had to make herself desolate just so she would not succumb to the call.

Halbrand must have known some of her plight but she did not care for his understanding, nor his solace. She did not even care what he had done in all the time she had not seen him that evening, alone to do whatever he pleased under the shade of Mount Doom. Around the two of them, silent watchers in the dark, the night dragged on. Deadly quiet, tedious, unending. Until an eternity later, it did end.

***

As the new day dawned – hard to tell as it was in the shadows of Mordor – what remained of Halbrand’s council met in a smaller room on the second level. Between Bronwyn and Anárion stood an empty chair and the human woman looked as glum as the quarter around them felt. It was another empty one, about the size of a generous bedchamber, and Galadriel wondered absentmindedly whom Adar had planned to house in all these vacant rooms. 

She barely listened to what was said at the hastily fashioned table. Only when the conversation turned to the Númenorian’s, Halbrand said something that got her attention. 

“You all know I have little authority in this Middle Earth,” Halbrand began, looking at Elendil and his son. “I am a king in little more than name, over naught more than this carcass of a land and what remains untouched in Nurn. – But what else I have is west of here, past the mountains. The riverlands where you landed. Osgeende and some other small towns, stretching to the Mouths of the Anduin and along the shore. It would please me greatly to offer you that land as a show of my gratitude.”

Galadriel swallowed. This did not compute. Even through her stupor, she knew that there was something afoot, something Halbrand seeked to gain from relinquishing this vast amount of space to the exiled Númenorians. She only did not know what. If anything, Elendil was hooked.

“Lord Halbrand, we could not–”

“Please,” Halbrand interjected, calm yet beseeching. “I cannot help feeling responsible. Mine and Galadriel’s arrival in Númenor is what cost you your home and you came to our aid on little more than half an oath, which you could have easily broken and no one could have faulted you for it. This is the least I can do to repay this debt.”

Galadriel almost had to laugh as Elendil graciously, humbly inclined his head, accepting it all. And so what would soon become Gondor was to be a token of Sauron’s gratefulness to men. He was truly the Lord of Gifts. She would have shuddered if anything had any meaning still. 

“But what of you?” Asked Elendil. “Are you to be content with this shadowland? For you and your people?”

“I have high hopes that it will not remain thus,” Halbrand said.

“What do you mean?” It was the first time Bronwyn had spoken, her voice raspy, sore-throated from what must have been a night of crying.

“I believe I told you,” Halbrand said with an encouraging, warm smile. “I believe that we can undo what has been done here.” He gestured at Galadriel, who now listened intently and sat up in her chair. “I believe that with the power we have witnessed Galadriel wield last night, we can restore our lands.”

“How?” Anárion asked, although it did not sound doubtful of Galadriel being capable of anything at all.

She had heard the humans whisper about her incessantly in the quiet of the morning about what she had done, all half in awe and half terrified of her. It was why no one had approached her all day, giving her a wide berth and averting their gazes as she walked past them to find some privacy to change from her armour into a light brown suede leather dress. Not that she minded being left alone, she had no great wish to speak with anyone. But now, she did quite wish to know what Halbrand was building towards.

“What keeps us in the shadows is the mountain,” Halbrand explained as if he had heard her think. “So, I believe that if we can manage to quieten it, the sky will clear and we will have sun again. When the light returns, we will heal the land, and replenish it. My people will have their home returned to them and we shall rebuild it better and greater than ever before. – And we shall be beloved neighbours; sister kingdoms, united in prosperity and peace.”

Galadriel looked around the table, aghast by all of it but not sure why. The Númenorian’s were enthralled by Halbrand’s words and Bronwyn cried silently again, but it did not seem to be for grief this time. 

“How do you propose we do that?” She asked him testily, her own voice brittle from misuse and looked at him for the first time all morning. “Quiet the mountain?”

“There must be some way,” he said and shrugged and gave her a look that told her to stop pressing him on it in front of these people. “I have full faith in your abilities.”

He meant their abilities, and the abilities of the ring on her finger, and there was that dark feeling inside her again, that sense of doom.

He wants to use me , she thought. He only ever wanted to use me. But instead of reproach, she found this thought only stirred in her a weird sort of gallows humour. She wanted to laugh. None of this mattered. None of this was real. Halbrand was scheming, clear as day. It was a waiting game to see what his true intent was, what all of this was meant to do for him in the end. Galadriel did not have to wait long.

After some back and forth about the practicalities and the timeline – about how half of the Númenorian soldiers were supposed to remain to protect the reclaimed land while the other half was to escort the rest of the Southoner’s safely from Osgeende to join them there – it was Anárion who raised the question of prolonged security; the question of what to do about the orcs. Halbrand pretended to think for a long time, to Galadriel now that she knew him an obvious charade, and then it all fell into place. 

“I have given this much thought,” Halbrand said and Galadriel suppressed a mirthless chuckle – he had literally just play-acted out all that thought again for his audience’s benefit after all and still obviously felt the need to point it out. “And I recognise that what I believe is best, might sound unfathomable at first, and trust me I have trouble believing myself that I feel thusly, but I believe there is only one path forward that is right. – I beseech you to extend to me at least an open mind.”

“Go on then,” she muttered under her breath and Halbrand threw her a brief, irritated sideway glance but opted to ignore her, returning his attention to the others.

“I believe we should make peace with the orcs, and I hope to offer them a home in the shelter of the mountains.”

“What?!” Galadriel hissed, as vexed as she could be, indignance and utter shock fought their way through her numbed state as far to the forefront as they could.

He could not be serious. This could not be his plan. – But then again of course it could. For this was obviously exactly the thing he would do. He was playing two long games at the very same time, the exact way he had ever since she had agreed to join him. Again, she felt herself teetering close to madness, close to hysterical laughter once more. Her hollow chest nearly heaved with how she tried to keep her calm. She was beside herself, as if she were floating somewhere on the ceiling.

“I cannot believe that I am saying this, but I think there is reason in that plan,” Elendil said, meaning to placate Galadriel, speaking on behalf of the false king.

And now it made sense why Halbrand had so readily parted with half of his kingdom. It had all been for this moment, so he could buy Elendil’s goodwill. The ingeniousness would be awe-inspiring if it weren’t so coldly calculated and vicious. A bitter laugh wedged in Galadriel’s throat as she witnessed all of it in dejected horror.  

This is not real, she reminded herself.

“A terrible enemy can be a powerful ally when turned into a friend,” Elendil continued to explain his bought and sorely paid-for stance. “But how do you expect to win over your people to see this reasoning? It was the orcs who ran them from their homes and inflicted on them great pain.”

“I hoped to defer to Bronwyn for this very question,” Halbrand said, looking at the woman, as Galadriel sunk back into her chair, barely there again, just paralyzed at the madness which was unfolding around her.

Bronwyn’s forehead was set in a frown but she did not scream and protest, which would have confounded Galadriel if anything at all still had any meaning.

“The alternative would be more bloodshed, would it not?” Bronwyn finally voiced. “More death. More young folk turned into soldiers to fight on and on against an enemy that hates us beyond reason. – So I say, we do attempt to make peace. But there has to be justice. A punishment. Some recompense for the suffering caused. And the orcs must swear to not leave their mountain dwellings and never to harm a single hair on a single human being ever again. If we shall have this reassurance of them, I am certain I can sway our people to the resolution.”

It was astounding. All of it was utterly baffling. Halbrand was setting himself up with a shadow army at his back and none of them saw what was happening. His scheme was working completely, he had them all eating out of the palm of his hand. Galadriel stood up without being fully aware of the movement.

“I cannot be here for this,” she declared and guffawed a broken, short and dour laugh. “This is madness.”

Then she turned on her heel and made for the exit.

“Galadriel,” she heard Elendil behind her, heard his chair screech over the floor as he stood up too, but then Halbrand spoke.

“Let her go,” he said quietly, with such a confidence it would have made her sick to her stomach if there was any sense of true existence left in her. “I will talk it through with her later. – She will come around.”

When the door fell shut behind Galadriel, she finally did laugh, handing herself over to temporary insanity. He thought she was some unruly filly to talk down, some hysteric child he could mould into another hapless pawn for his little schemes and dirty deals. How could she not laugh?! He knew nothing. This was her world! And it was not real. He was not real. Nothing mattered! She hollered maniacally, holding her belly, losing her breath – and then she sat out for the staircase and marched up to the top of the tower.

***

Galadriel stood on Adar’s balcony, her slippered feet staining with his dried black blood. She had stopped laughing a while ago and had taken to staring into the murk ahead, at the sliver of light at the horizon and the vast, grand, burnt down stretch of shadowland beneath her. 

It was all so comical, so meaningless. She was as dark as this world. And just as empty. She had created this ridiculous playground to test that one last path that Sauron himself had suggested, had so claimed would be his redemption. Now she sneered at what had become of it. He was shrouding his evil in innocent, kingly pale robes but he was still rotten to the core. That terrible monster that she loved, that in the dead of night, sighing from her own touch, she had allowed herself to believe – to hope – could be truly repentant yet, was still the very same monster she had set out to destroy so many centuries ago. There was no changing him and she had been deluding herself into believing she out of everyone in the universe could. 

Any moment now he would find her and end this farce. Maybe he would push her off this very balcony. Maybe he would strangle her with his own two hands. She would let him. She did not care anymore. It did not matter. It was all for naught. It was all… devastatingly hilarious.   

She huffed out a laugh when he finally found her, must have followed the sound of her broken heart right up into the tower. She heard him close the spiked portal behind him, heard him walk the length of the room and turned around to face him. 

She remained in place and waited for him to make a move, waited for him to release her from this gruesome prison, this torturous wasteland – but he stood still too, and just looked at her.

“Can we talk about this calmly?” He asked – and had no sense of the enormity of his failure.

She laughed in his face. What a mockery!

“You must be so proud of yourself,” she heard herself say, sounding quite amused but darkly so, scornful like the place they were stranded in. “You have set this up so nicely, so neatly. – A king in the light of day with a cavalry of adoring men at your feet and a shadowy army at your back, bound to your side through mercy.”

She walked towards him, almost sauntering, losing all sense of reality. It felt as even the ground beyond her was shifting and all that remained still was his face, watching her with unease. Oh, he had no idea what was wrong with her. He had no clue how much he hurt her.

“King of the Southlands and Lord of Mordor, all at the same time,” she continued, mockingly bowing to him. “How grand! How ingenious! And to think I believed even for a moment you could change who you are!”

“You do not understand,” he huffed and finally he turned away from her, exasperatedly roughing his hair with both hands, but obviously still believing he could bait her with insolence, like this was just another fight, like this was not the end of it all. “Always and always you choose to make me your enemy.”

“But you are !” She declared. “You are my enemy and a forked-tongued, double-dealing demon! That is who you are. All you want still, is power!”

“I want to make this world better!” He half-yelled, spinning back around and started towards her but she held out an outstretched hand, making him stop.

“Oh, please !” She spat, like a most venomous snake. “I am not one of your little acolytes, I do not believe your twisted show of reasonableness for a second!”

He tilted his head at her and it seemed he truly had the gall to keep arguing when everything was said already.

“So, annihilating an entire species is not unreasonable to you?” He challenged, and it was the height of comedy that he tried to turn this around on her again. How fitting, though.

“You are bending the truth to your will,” she scoffed coldly.

“I wish to preserve innocent life!” He bellowed and took a step towards her.

“Innocent?!” Galadriel almost perished on the spot from the absurdity, mostly because he actually looked like he truly believed what he was saying. “The orcs are not innocent!”

“Are they not?!” He hollered back at her. “Have they not fought in a war they were created for with as little choice in it as you had in all of yours and as I had in all of mine? Were they not given orders and told to stay the course and kill all who stood in their way just like we did?”

“They were created by Morgoth!” Galadriel could not feel her face anymore, nor the rest of her body, even as it carried her forward to step up to his confounded, stubborn face. 

“And Morgoth is gone!” He insisted. “They are still here and they had as little say in their existence as you had! They did not choose to be made.” He took a breath and brought a hand up to his chest, inclining his head as if begging her to look upon him as one of the innocents he so now claimed were all the most debased, unholy abominations of this earth; “ I did not choose to be made.”

Galadriel sneered but Halbrand did not give up.

“Adar was a craven fool but he had one thing right,” he said and she could tell that it cost him, not that this elicited a shred of sympathy from her. “They are living creatures who did not ask to be born and as such, they deserve a home the same as anyone else.”

She shook her head, done with this pointless conversation and turned away but he grabbed her shoulder and yanked it back so she kept facing him. He knew better than to keep his hands on her, though.

“You want for me to eradicate them, is that what would make you believe me capable of redemption?” He asked and for a moment, he seemed to truly be asking – but then he shook his head. “You would have me commit genocide and dare to fashion yourself righteous and me the villain?!”

“This is ridiculous,” she decided, pushing away the sliver of pause, the inkling of shame his words threatened upon her and instead, she did as had served her well enough this whole unreal, unfathomably horrendous day; she surrendered once more to the nullness of it all. 

It would soon be over. Soon she would awaken in a dungeon deep beneath the Halls of Mandor and she would laugh and laugh and consign herself to madness entirely. She abandoned her tight hold over her body, released her jaw, let everything pass through her with a deep breath, chuckled weakly once more. And then shrugged.

“You know what, have it your way,” she said, all anger gone from her voice. “Build your little empire and pull your strings.” She stalked over to Adar’s empty throne and let a hand glide over it, feeling the ridges in the course stone. “I do not care anymore. It does not signify. It is all done and lost now. You are beyond saving. None of this can be rectified.” 

Then there was that hopeless humour spreading to her bones again. 

“And do you know what the best thing is?” She turned her head over her shoulder to look upon him and tell him, because why bother anymore at this point; “None of it is even real. It’s not real, nothing is real. It’s all dust in the end. It’s nothing, nothing !”

“You are not yourself,” Halbrand said and it was almost droll that he sounded sincerely concerned. He looked around him, fisted his tunic and then gestured wildly with his hands in frustration. “It’s this wretched tower, its darkness is eating away at you. You are losing your mind!” 

Of course he did not understand the truth of her words, how could he?

“Maybe, but what does it matter?” She shrugged once more, laughed once more, and then exclaimed, in a demented, frenzied sort of way. “Nothing matters!”

“Galadriel, calm yourself!” Halbrand plead and made his way towards her.

She shook her head, feeling herself slip even further but entirely unwilling to stop it. 

Halbrand reached her, put both hands on her shoulder again, as if he planned to shake her out of it. “Gal–”

“No,” she cut him off and mumbled to herself: “Nothing… matters.” 

Then her head snapped up to him and a wild, an insane thought took hold of her, more powerful than any other thing that ever had done so before, even the ring, even all the strength of the Valar. 

Nothing matters, she thought.

“So this doesn’t either,” she muttered.

And then she kissed him.

There was nothing tender about it, nothing sweet, just pure release. If it was all ending, at least Galadriel wanted this in return for all her pain. Just once she wanted to know what it felt like, what he tasted like. And she chased that taste of him with pure selfishness and greed, with reckless and entire abandon. 

It was almost funny how Halbrand at first was so taken aback that he was completely pliable in her arms, soft like a strawman. She wedged her tongue into his mouth and grabbed him, pulled him to her and around until she had him pressed against the back of the throne which was taller than them both.

And only when that violence shook Halbrand as his back hit the rock hard, did he finally become wise of what was happening. And then he returned her greed with all his own fervour. Desire cursed though Galadriel and at once, all of that numbness, all of the emptiness and hopelessness and madness cleared from her mind. Safe for the madness that kept her close to him, made her rip at his clothes and grab his hair. Then he took over, took hold of her body and lifted her briefly, only to whip them around to push her against the stone in turn. He groaned when she hooked one leg around his hip, allowing him to press even closer. 

He tasted like sunsets. All she knew in the world was him, all she felt was his body. She hated him and she loved him and she wanted him so much it nearly broke her in half. And she had him, right there. Hard and panting and wanting her, too. 

He cursed into her mouth when she took a second to breathe and opened her eyes to him, just for a moment. He looked like a hungry beast, ready to devour her. He was alight with it. He was so, so beautiful. She panted but did not finish the exhale because he caught it again with his hungry mouth, his hands roaming all over her body. 

Nothing had ever felt like this. Nothing compared. Every inch of her he touched suddenly felt solid and immediate. The boundaries of herself returned, if only to yearn to blend with his entirely. And if this wasn’t real, then what was? 

He kissed her harder and it made no sense that that was even possible. He caught her bottom lip with his own, sucked at it. Then he bit her, just a little, and she moaned at the bit of pain mixing in with the pleasure. Her whole body trembled, but he did not let off and she did not let him rest either. 

Purely on instinct, she scratched down his back, moved her hand to his side and then pinched his flesh so he would make room. He abandoned her lips for a moment to lick and bite her neck, making her shudder, but she remained focused only on bringing her hand between their bodies. 

Halbrand growled and buckled forward as she finally got ahold of him, cupping his firmness, weighing it in her palm and squeezing. Whimpering, wanton and desperate, he claimed her mouth with his again. Oh, she was fire and light herself. She was… herself. He kissed her and rutted against her, and Galadriel returned fully into her body. And then fully understood. 

Suddenly everything was clear again. 

Her task. His scheming. The consequences. How she could not fail. How this could not end. How he wanted to use her. How she could not let him.

“No,” she breathed, unhanded him, then turned her head, breaking the kiss and shoved him away.

He toppled backwards, just as hapless now that she stopped this as he had been when she had started it. He looked completely delirious, his cheeks flush, his wet mouth hanging open; puffy, red and abused. As his eyes struggled to focus on her, her own lips tingled and pricked, burning where his beard had chafed her skin. Her lips were pulsating with what they had done. Her whole body was. But this had been a mistake. A mistake that did bring her back to her purpose though. To perfect clarity.

While he was still recovering, still as weak as he ever would be with wanting her so much, she put space between them and gathered her wits and her breath.

“You have planned all this. Handing over the riverlands. Quieting the mountain, sparing the orcs,” she muttered, walking backwards. “I see it now, the whole extent of it.” He straightened, fighting to get a hold of himself to oppose her, and struggling to. “Do not deny it!” 

She knew exactly what to do now, how this trial could still be saved. But first, she needed him to know that she saw him; saw him truly for what he was capable of and that he could not hope to deceive her going forward.

“You put me on that balcony while you stayed in the shadows and you told me exactly what to do.” It all came to her as she said it out loud, the whole sordid truth of it. “You told me to make them afraid of me. And your offering them a home will make them loyal to you. You wish to use me to give the orcs exactly what it takes to bind them. – One to love, and one to fear.”

Halbrand straightened himself, his jaw moved, clenched and unclenched, he was staring into her eyes as if he hoped to pull her soul out through them. – And then there it was, that little smirk. That little knowing look that he would give her when she would find him out. Almost like he was proud that she saw through his cunning.

“I told you I would make you my Queen,” he rasped.

There was the truth, at last. Like she had predicted. Progress, if just a little. And now she would take a page from his book. Now, she would work him. Now, she would pose a secret test to him to see how, or if, he could pass it. 

She hardened her features quite deliberately, touched her fingers together, pulled Nenya off of her hand and tossed it to the ground. 

It pinged on the floor, then rolled a few feet on the reflecting dark stone, right up to his feet.

“Find another head to crown,” she told him, an echo of what he had once told her, back when he was still able to fool her.

Then she turned around and made for the door.

“Galadriel, wait,” he called after her. She kept walking, opened the door. “I said WAIT!”

He shouted like he had on that raft, in the real world, before he had thrown her into the river in Eregion and ran away from her. He would not allow her to do the same now, for a burst of power flew past her and shut the door with a crash so it shuddered with it.

“Look at me,” he said, his voice low again.

She turned around slowly, made her face impassive and felt the spikes dig into her back.

Halbrand kept his eyes locked on her as he bent down to get the ring and rolled it down onto his finger slowly. Galadriel drew in a sharp breath as she watched him feel out its power, watched his gaze flicker away from her to his hand. This was it. This was his test. This was not the one ring, at least not yet, but it was powerful enough. It was temptation enough. He was transfixed with it – and Galadriel held her breath.

His eyes flitted back to hers and he turned his body, keeping his focus on her, and touched his hand and the ring against the stone beside him – and then he sang. Low and quiet, under his breath, but beautiful and in a language so ancient, even Galadriel did not know it. Maybe in Eru’s own tongue. If anything, black speech, it was not.

And the effect it had was not dark either, not at all. 

From Halbrand’s hand, a force sprung, a force of transformation. The obsidian blackness of the rock turned to grey, rolling like a wave, down the throne, then spreading quickly onto the ground, making striking white marble out of the polished floor. It creeped to Galadriel, changing under her feet. She turned around to watch the spikes at her back turn into light wood, winding into flowing floral carvings, like the elves were known to design them, like she remembered from Valinor.

He was creating a new place. Remaking this dark tower. As the transformation continued to what must have been the length of the entire structure, Galadriel felt the curse of the walls life, the dark magic dissipate. Its crushing weight lifted off of her, replaced with a calmness. Not quite happiness, not quite relief, not yet. This was not done, this was not the end, far from it. But all was not lost. If he would do as she hoped, she could still succeed.

With a last shiver, a last breath and a last hum, Halbrand finished his work. He steadied himself against the throne, which too was now transformed into an intricate design, and then rose back to his full height.

She watched him as he marched over to her, taking off the ring and his face was blazing as he took her hand, placed Nenya in her palm and closed her fingers around it with his. He swallowed hard.

“You cannot leave me, not now,” he said – and passed his test. “You have to keep this. Please. Please stay. I need you.”

Galadriel had half a mind to kiss him one last time, even though she knew it should never happen again – but she did not get to either way, because behind her, the door shook with urgent raps.

“Galadriel, Halbrand – what was that?!” It was Elendil and he certainly would not be alone with his questions. “What has just happened?”

“I expect you want me to tell them it was me?” Galadriel looked up to Halbrand, his hand still clasped around hers as she dropped her voice to a whisper. “This is the last time I will lie for you, Sauron.”

He inclined his head to her, the smallest little smile playing on his lips, holding her gaze. And they both knew it was not true.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: QUIET THE MOUNTAIN

At dawn, the white tower stood like a fiery beacon against the gloom of Mordor. It was radiating serenity and calm next to the ashen wasteland, and what about it had been crude and imposing before, now was inviting and intricate, a startling contrast to what Adar’s tower had made of the vista. It had been a fork in the landscape, Halbrand’s transformed version of it, was a lighthouse. A symbol of hope.

Galadriel walked down the marble stairs all the way to the foot of it, all the while the mortals who flanked her path beheld her in awe. They all believed the transformation of Adar’s tower was her doing – and why should they doubt it? 

Halbrand certainly told them nothing different. He kept a few paces behind her, rehashing to Elendil what he had come up with the night before, some yarn about Galadriel’s innate elven ability of transformation – of healing – and that he expected her to be able to appease Orodruin in much the same manner. He wanted this to be their next task, wanted to set out for the top of the mountain within the hour and get it all done as soon as possible. He enlisted Elendil and Bronwyn as his deputies, asked them to keep charge of their reclaimed stronghold while he and Galadriel would be on their way as soon as it could possibly be arranged.

Galadriel did not mind his haste. If anything, she hoped to be gone before anyone had the time and poise to look with some great detail at the states of her and Halbrand and recall the way that had left the tower room the night before; his hair a twisted mess, her neck bruised and both their lips puffy, red and swollen from kissing. 

Galadriel should not have done that. Certainly, the state of mind which had led her to making that mistake, had been one of such numbness that now that she was cured of it, her actions already seemed like those of an entirely different person – and so she allowed herself some grace for having done as she had. This did not, however, detract from the consequences she would have to take. Because that kiss, as much as it stirred her back into good sense and had anchored her to herself once more, it had been powerful in a way that she could not allow to strengthen further by means of repeating.

Because everything else paled in comparison now that she remembered it, readying her travel pack in the relative quiet of the main hall where now only the wounded remained as the rest of the soldiers were preparing for their own next orders. Her body still buzzed with the recollection, her neck pricked where he’d sucked at her flesh until it bruised, and whenever she touched her fingers to her mouth, she felt how her skin had broken under the onslaught, made raw and sensitive from his beard – and shivered hotly. 

A flash of desire coursed through her whenever she allowed herself to relive the moments, especially the parts when he had driven his body against hers with abandon, as if no matter how close he got to her, he would never be satisfied with it. And the memories of the sound of his voice as he whimpered upon her touch, his weakened, helpless moans reverberated in her very being. Rippling out, like disturbed water.

But even further than the physical effect their kisses had on her – and the effect of it had been greater than anything else alike it she had ever experienced before – reached the effect on her soul. His mouth on hers had helped her distinguish her realities and made her aware of her purpose, but beyond that, it offered so much of its own. 

If she let herself, being close to him, entwined with him thus, could just as easily become her purpose and her reality in and of itself. His proximity, his hands on her and the feelings he elicited felt only akin to one other thing she could name: the feeling of power she had felt when using Nenya and her borrowed Valar strength. 

But where that power had drained her and made her ashamed and hollow, yearning for another hit of it, his physical closeness, his body against her body chasing their absolute union, made her feel taller than herself, fuller. More complete. She only realised now that her whole existence, she had been looking for something that she could want more than control, vengeance and mastery of her circumstances – because wanting those things made her feel guilty. Now she wanted to kiss him again, and do more even than that – and had never wanted anything more, ever.

She wanted to strip him down and cover every inch of his body with her mouth and disappear wholly into how they would move together once they crossed that very last boundary. And she knew with perfect clarity that if she allowed herself to indulge this want, she would be lost to it, to him, to them.  

In time, she would forget her true purpose, she would consign herself to only the might their conciliation would have. She would not get to return him redeemed. She would just return him hers. Because she knew in her soul that he felt the same way.

She could bridge the last gap, his past deeds and his current scheming be damned, and he would fall to her the way all the great kings of men had fallen for his rings in their distant, strange shared past. He would serve her the way he had served Morgoth – and maybe never do another evil thing out of his own volition. But he would also never do good for his own sake.

So for both of their sakes, she knew she needed to ensure that boundary remained uncrossed. Fastening her pack to her shoulders, she frowned, anticipating the conflict she was walking into having to tell that to him somehow. He would fight her on it, would try to entice her, would gnaw at her restraint and attempt to break down her defences. Still, there was no other way. She had to convince him to see reason.

***

This was her plan as they said their farewells and began their march up Orodruin. And there, halfway up, after night had fallen and they made camp, she laid out her arguments for him, anticipating his imminent protest. But Halbrand managed to surprise her once more, completely subverting her set expectations, because instead of resistance and displeasure, he met her words with agreement.

She turned her head to study his features, trying to puzzle out if he was playing an angle. She wondered if maybe he had secretly decided that, with all the new power he had now come into, he did not wish to be bound to his human form after all and just took the opportunity her stance offered, but he looked entirely sincere.

“We both have our objectives here,” he elaborated, reading her face as if her astonishment was spelled out on it with words. “I still wish to heal what I helped ruin in the war and I’m afraid you will have to remain as stubbornly convinced of my debasedness to keep me on that path. – Should we do what we did in the tower again, if we did more, even, I could not say I’d be able to do anything else ever again. I’d keep you locked to my side and us hidden away forever to do to each other just as we pleased, the rest of the universe be damned.”

Suddenly the air was stirring between them. He looked at her darkly, hungrily, and somehow, him agreeing with her to refrain from all the things they could do to each other, made those things a thousandfold more tempting. Briefly, she wondered if that was the point of it, but instead of acting on the static energy that flirred around them – instead of leaving the spot where he sat opposite of her beyond the fire, and cover her with him like she yearned for him to do – he remained firm and immovable.

Galadriel fought down a groan of frustration with a heavy swallow, making a weird sort of whimpering sound of it, but where he could have been smug in face of her obvious hunger for him, he just looked upon her as if that very sense of frustration permeated him just the same. 

It would be so easy to just give in, they both knew it. It would take no effort at all to fall into each other. They were all alone on the side of that mountain, no one would be any the wiser. Galadriel’s gaze dropped to his lips on its own accord, her face pulsing with the memory of his mouth moving against hers. Halbrand drew in a sharp breath, clenched his fist and shifted where he sat.

“I think we should talk about something else now,” he all but yelped and turned his face away from her. “Anything else, please.”

“Agreed,” she echoed and then there was a long moment of silence.

“I imagine you still have some things left to say about my proposal regarding the orcs,” he offered eventually and it was most welcome because this reminded her that he was still an infuriating foe as well as this personified, tantalising promise of complete release and utter sensual oblivion. 

“If I were to grant you the benefit of the doubt,” she began, taking the path he offered, “and accept that you wish to prevent further loss of life, you still can’t fault me for being wary of you setting yourself up with two armies. Two peoples who you’re binding to yourself.”

“To save them,” he provided.

“To rule them, too,” she remained.

“As I said, I see no difference between the two.”

“We should get some rest,” she decided before this would evolve into another fight over principles which it very well could.

It was funny that they even did this, rest and take a break for the night, because he did not need to sleep and she did not get to. He however, did not know this, so this was really all for his benefit. She played the part of the lesser being to keep him in the dark of the true nature of their reality and laid down on her mat, looking into the glowing embers in the fire.

On the other side of it, he did the same, his face painted golden by the flickering flames. He kept his hazel eyes locked on hers, warm and shimmering. She shivered.

“Are you cold?” He asked.

She was not, could not possibly be, with a stream of steady lave seeping down the mountain just a league at their back, radiating heat.

“Yes,” she said anyway, knowing what he would do with that information and unable to keep from entertaining it.

Halbrand got up, dragging his own mat after him and rounded the fire. He towered over her where she lay, put his mat behind hers and then sunk down as she rolled to her side so he could slot in behind her. He pressed close, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulled her against him as he burrowed his nose in her neck.

“Your hair smells like smoke,” he whispered and she shifted to mould herself into his frame. 

This was a catastrophically bad idea, going diametrically against their earlier resolution to stay away from each other and they both knew she was not cold. They were cheating, blatantly, playing with fire. Halbrand gasped when she moved again, rolling her hips back slightly against his front and he grew hard so quickly it made her see stars. He spread his fingers over her stomach, only to dig in his fingernails, scratching through the thick woolen fabric of her dress.

He bunched up her clothes in his fist and they both panted with restraint. She could feel his forceful, scattered puffs of breath hit the sensitive skin beneath her earlobe and shuddered as he groaned low and raspy.

“Hmmph. — No,” he winced and a half heartbeat later he squeezed her tight one last time.

Then he let her go to flop onto his back, where he lay and caught his breath, winded as if he had just completed a very strenuous task. 

Galadriel could not fault him and rolled to her back as well, staring up into the sky where lightning lit up parts of the black clouds overhead in arrhythmic patterns. 

“You are going to be the death of me,” Halbrand declared. 

Galadriel turned around and propped herself up on her elbow. She almost chuckled. Who would have thought that one day she would lie side by side with Sauron, on the edge of Mount Doom, while they both struggled to keep their hands off of each other?

“Thank you,” he murmured after a long while of just looking at her.

“For what?” She felt her forehead wrinkle into a frown of confusion.

“For staying,” he replied. 

Galadriel did not know how to respond to this, so she just sighed, nodded, and closed her eyes.

She willed herself to sleep and when she momentarily awoke, Halbrand was still watching her.

***

It turned out that their nightly camp had been just two hours off of a perfect path into the mountain. The rock opened into the volcano onto a precipice where all that separated them from the bubbling lava below was a lengthy and deathly drop. 

Halbrand walked up to the edge, cautious and slowly, and chanced a look over the edge only to quickly retreat.

“Is it strange that I have been uneasy about heights ever since I got this body?” He asked her and the concept of Sauron being afraid of heights seemed completely amusing to her for some reason.

“How do you suggest we go about this?” She asked, gesturing around them, staying close to the rocky walls herself.

Halbrand returned to her, frowning, looked to her, then the pit, and Galadriel understood.

“You don’t know, do you?” She asked.

“Not in any great detail,” Halbrand admitted, somewhat sheepishly. “I thought between us, we would find a way.”

He shrugged and just dropped to his knees, then waved her over, motioning for her to sit down beside him. She did so, thinking of nothing better to do either and mirrored the way he put both hands on the stone under them.

“Do you feel the current? The motion of the earth below? The fire?” Halbrand asked, concentration settling on his features.

Galadriel focused herself, turned her attention away from him and unto the world beneath her. Now that she listened for it, she could hear the rumbling of the earth and feel out the streams of flowing fire weaving through the ground like vines. There was fervour in that ground, an unrest. But it was neither evil, nor unnatural. It was nature, with no ulterior motive or dark purpose. The mountain just was.

“Ah, yes,” hummed Halbrand. “This is the way.”

She felt him use his power before he even started the low murmured singing which had already transformed the tower. It coursed through the ground, spreading from his hands.

“I do not know how to–,” she muttered but he cut her off.

“Just be with me,” he said and covered his hand with hers, a shock coursing through her system as he used her as a conduit for his might and channelled her powers as well.

It was immediately scary how he used her – like that time they healed Isildur, but a thousandfold as strong. Through and along with her, he used the same strength that she had mustered to defeat the witches and it was quickly becoming as draining, and as tempting to give herself over to it. 

She winced, fearing the consequences, and Halbrand must have felt it because his head snapped up to her and he squeezed her hand tighter, stopped chanting.

“Look at me,” he whispered. “Let me do it.”

Galadriel listened, could not do anything but. Halbrand then used both of their strength and the burden of it lifted off of Galadriel within a moment. She suddenly understood and had greater sympathy for how Halbrand must have felt being so easily able to wield great power like that. He must have been teetering on that same edge Galadriel had only reached two days before, but for much, much longer. He was likely always just a hair’s breadth away from succumbing entirely to this pure power. Truly, in the face of it, the flaming eye did not seem so surprising an outcome.

She tried to make herself pliant and malleable, let him draw from her and carry the burden. Somehow he managed to shield her from the worst depletion, as well as the temptation. All she had left to do was feel out the way he manipulated the earth itself. How he found the tempest beneath them, the tumultuous nature of the earth and what lay below and he tamed it. He coaxed it like an animal. Galadriel, through him, could feel the lava pulse like blood through veins and arteries, and felt that pulse become less and less and less active as he calmed it down. 

She knew that this was likely the exact opposite of what he must have done to the mountain in the real version of events. When he was the Dark Lord of Mordor, Mount Doom was never settled, never quiet thanks to him, it should not be so wondrous that he could calm Orodruin as well, if he so chose it. But Galadriel was still surprised at how seamlessly he seemed to be able to do it.

Though, when it was done and the heat slowly dissipated around them as the yellow-red lava slowly turned to black stone below, Halbrand made a noise of great exertion, removed his hand from hers and let himself fall down onto his back to catch his breath.

“Why do you even want me around?” Galadriel heard herself ask before she could stop it, still a little dizzied with how he had used her to assist him, but understanding in her recovery from it that he had not taken much from her.

Even exerting as much power as she had the other night, drawing from Nenya and the Valar’s strength, it did not compare – at least not in this reality – to the amount of it he was using. And still, he was fundamentally weakened by his human form.

“You could have done this by yourself easily, it seems,” she continued. 

“It is better to share a task like that,” he muttered, staring up, past her face. “Better to have someone close to reign you in. – Someone to make sure you do not sacrifice too much of yourself for the magic.”

Galadriel nodded, and remembered how in his true time, he had forged the one ring alone and had created that very same problem for himself. He had put nearly all of him into that ring. When it was done, without it, he was less than half what he had been before. Which also posed a question now.

“Did you lose some of it?” She asked him. “Of your magic – to the mountain?”

“A bit of it,” he shrugged and heaved himself off into a sitting position to look at her. “I lost some of it to you, too. The same way you did to me, and Orodruin. I also lost some to the tower yesterday, and we both lost some to Isildur when we healed him. It’s all a transfer of energy. – And that energy does not stop to exist, it does not deplete, it just changes form. It isn’t always too clear when it happens where it goes and how much of it you are parting with. Having you by my side helps anchor me, helps me from tipping over.”

“So it was not as easy as it looked after all?”

“It was not too hard, just strenuous,” he said. “An achievable task. And with you close it’s easier.” He paused, lowered his voice and looked away – but she still heard him: “With you close everything is easier.”

***

If putting the mountain back to rest had ultimately proved itself to be an ‘achievable task’, as Halbrand had coined it, getting the orcs in line was a downright breeze. 

Galadriel had her issues believing how seamlessly all of Halbrand’s scheming came together and bore fruit. It almost seemed like a greater power had had its hand in it, the way all of his pieces fell in line, cascading one on top of each other, just the way he must have planned it.

A group of Elendil’s men had rounded up an orc who had been hiding with some of his kind in the mountains and brought them back to the White Tower while Halbrand and her had been seeing to Orodruin. The orc awaited the King’s return in chains, but well taken care off otherwise, and was given an extra ration of food, so he would understand the message Halbrand wanted him to bring back to his kin, as an offer of mercy. 

Halbrand had him released back into freedom with instructions to tell the others who were hiding, to distinguish from among them one emissary who could speak for the orcs to have a meeting with him and Galadriel on neutral ground – and to Galadriel’s great surprise upon the meeting, there was neither a riot, nor an assassination attempt.

She had expected violence or much worse, when they had ridden out together to a plateau on the mountain pass of Ered Lithui, and was prepared to bring the orcs to the same end the witches had met by her hand. Yet, as the emissary and five others arrived, they made no move against Halbrand or her. If anything, they appeared to be in terrified awe of her and seemed to harbour only curious apprehension for the new King in the South.

“I have come to offer you a path to peace, in the hope of earning your understanding and reaching an agreement that will suit both our people,” Halbrand said to the apparent leader, who had introduced himself as Urbul, the Leveler, and then laid out his plan for them.

Halbrand started by telling them how Orodruin was at rest once more and how soon, the sun would return, leaving them all without a place to survive daylight. Then he spoke of old mines, abandoned many years ago by a royal line of dwarves who had died, that sat in the ground behind the White Tower. He told them he held the key to those mines, how it had been passed down to him by his forefathers who had once ruled these parts. He also told them he wanted to offer them those mines as a safe dwelling – if they agreed to his terms. 

The terms were as follows; no orc would take a step into any of the cities under King Halbrand’s protection without invitation. No orc would harm a human being, elf or dwarf and breaking that rule would result in death. The orcs would have to mine for the King and his people. They would also be allowed to trade to provide for themselves but a good portion of what they produced was to be handed over to the humans until Halbrand considered the blood debt paid, which they owed the Southoners for their crimes. 

In return, the orcs would be promised peace, a non-aggression pact to be henceforth agreed upon. They would accept King Halbrand as their authority as well – but for this acceptance, they would have the honour of their emissary receiving a seat on the king’s own council. 

This was the only time Galadriel did not merely stand beside Halbrand, mum and imposing, doing her part in scaring the orcs into submission just by her presence. 

She swallowed hard when Halbrand offered a seat at his – at their table – to Urbul, the Leveler. But if he noticed her discomfort with that, he did not acknowledge it, let alone change the agreement. She made a mental note to confront Halbrand about this particular lunacy later and when shortly afterward, he gave her a passing look, she knew he knew it was coming already.

Still, she held her peace for the time being, aware that they had to present a united front to the foe Halbrand meant to neutralise. So she played her part, the part in it being to be the personified “ or else ” about all of Halbrand’s generous and merciful offers. They would receive their own dwellings, even a representative at his court, become part of his kingdom – or else they would die. Galadriel would eviscerate them all, turn them into smithereens the way she had done with the witches. The One knew, she had half a mind to on the spot, even now. Her hatred of these foul creatures ran so deep. 

But then again, she had managed to all but swear herself to Sauron himself and fall in love with him, so she knew she would be able to control herself and not go on a murderous rampage unprovoked. These abominations might surprise her yet. She doubted it, but she allowed space for the possibility. Not surprising, in the face of all the facts, was the orc’s acceptance of Halbrand’s terms. 

After some further negotiating, and Halbrand coming up with some colourful lies to tell Elendil and the other humans about those hitherto unbeknown mines, less than a week later, he opened the old, sealed mine to the orcs who found it as inviting a place as any they had dwelled in before and as happy as these creatures could, they appeared to be. 

Especially since just as they moved their hoard into the mountain, up overhead, the ash cleared. Just like Halbrand had promised, now that the mountain was quiet again, the clouds dispersed at long last, and on an otherwise unremarkable day, the sun returned to the Southlands. 

***

Halbrand’s people returned from Osgeende the next day. Once they were settled, Elendil and his men left, with a promise to keep in constant contact, via birds and messengers, and to soon start work on a big straight road from their new kingdom to Halbrand’s, complete with a tunnel through the Western Mountains. Galadriel was sad to see him and his son go. 

For their parting left a hole at the council table, where now, next to Bronwyn who was still angry with her, Galadriel had to contend with Brod, the mouthy guardsman, now promoted to Lieutenant, and Urbul, the orc, who was travelling back and forth from the mines in the dark of night every other week to be disgusting and infuriating at their meetings. 

News of Elendil would reach her through steady and regular letters and she was happy to hear how well the Númenorians were settling in the riverlands. When word reached her that in celebration of their new rule, Osgeende would be renamed to Osgiliath and their kingdom called Gondor, the land of stone – in hopes of a long, stable reign – Galadriel was not surprised. History had a way of falling into place, she thought, even in her own manipulated reality. What did surprise her somewhat, was Halbrand’s own retitling of Mordor.

He declared to his people as they slowly built new houses at the foot of the White Tower, that they would raise a grand big city, huge and strong, to keep them safe and prosperous. And it would be called Galador, the land of light. It would become the new capital of the Kingdom of the Southlands. 

They all cheered to this with their new motto: The ground of our fathers, the lands of our sons and so on and so forth. They also chanted: “Galador, Galador, Galador!” – and it sounded a bit like her name and Halbrand smirked at her when they did, so she wondered if he had named the city a little bit for her as well.

But even as his people celebrated and the sun returned with a fervour, they would soon see that the state of the Southlands, at least the part upon which Halbrand was settled on building his kingdom, was worse than they had anticipated.

Funnily enough, the only ones of Halbrand’s subjects who thrived were the orcs in their mines. Urbul was deferential towards her and Halbrand, and every week a little bit more, as things were turning around for his kind. They had organised and were taking well to a life mostly designed by themselves. They did not feel like slaves anymore and it made them alike a completely new species.

The humans under Halbrand’s care however were struggling. They had to travel far and wide for farming and livestock herding. The great big city of Galador meanwhile only grew slow and tediously, and the lands around the mountain were predictably barren and desolate still. Now, it was just that the muddy ground caked over and began cracking with the sun beating down on it. 

Bronwyn had taken Halbrand to the side after their latest council session and warned him in hushed tones that people were getting frustrated with the slow progress. That they were hungry and tired and called to return to Nurn where things would be easier for them.

***

“Why do we not just do as they suggested?” Galadriel asked Halbrand later, when they were left alone in what was now Halbrand’s throne room.

He had fashioned the top of the tower with the grey stone throne into a belvedere, a space to hold court and his council meetings, with a direct passage to his personal quarters. Now a wall separated the throne room from his bedchamber with the balcony – boasting a few of all the promise his kingdom had, and a stark reminder every day that it was at present impossible to keep said promise.

“Why not just relocate to Nurn and give your people a chance to get back unto their feet?” Galadriel clarified, walking over to a finely designed wooden table that held a set of polished glasses and a carafe with water to pour herself a drink of it.

“We cannot give up this spot,” Halbrand said. “It is too important strategically. Nurn is just flat lands and it’s too far from the orcs.” 

Galadriel frowned.

“Do not look so surprised,” Halbrand sighed. “I might have wished to save them but I still believe they need to be kept under close watch and on a short leash.”

“Then what do we do?” Galadriel asked and returned with her glass to the table to sit down opposite of him – they had taken to keep as much of a physical distance from each other as they could at any given time. “Can you repeat with the land what you have done with the mountain and the tower? Transform it all?”

“No,” Halbrand said and wrinkled his brow in thought. “I told you, I am not a healer by trade. This is such a feat which could only be done by a healer… or someone who possesses strong nature magic. I could theoretically try and replicate that but with the size of the land… there would be not much left of my powers after, and I do think I will have need of them yet.”

Of course he would not part with his strength just to make the low hills and plains around them green and fruitful again. Galadriel would not even have thought to ask it of him. She knew, however, what he was going to ask of her and she said it before he could.

“You wish for me to contact the elves and see if they will help,” she stated, as it was not a question.

“If you would,” Halbrand said. “I do seek to enter into a formal alliance with your people. If it can be done in a way that does not jeopardise our relations with the dwarves.”

Halbrand had been very keen on forging alliances lately. Having already established close ties with the Gondorians, he then had set his sights on the dwarven kingdom in the Misty Mountains and was still waiting to hear back from his envoy regarding the offer of friendship he had extended from his fledgling realm. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” Galadriel sighed, unhappy herself about what she had to say next: “But the High King has been ever evasive of my attempts to reach him.”

“Maybe not Gil-galad, then,” Halbrand suggested. “Maybe your friend. Maybe Elrond?”

***

Seeing Elrond again, even if it was just in a shared dream, was like molasses onto her soul. It felt good to see an old friend, a kind face. Someone whom she loved without the threat of breaking the universe or her very sense of self. Elrond was surprised to see her, for she had not been in contact with him for a while, not since she had told him that Adar was dead and she would stay with Halbrand for the time being and help him set up his kingdom. 

“Gi suilon , Galadriel!” Elrond said as the surroundings of their meeting, a stretch of fall-coloured woods came into focus around them. “It is good to see you.”

“It is good to see you, too, my friend,” she smiled and so yearned to be able to talk to him about everything, to confide in him and hear his opinion – but it could never happen.

“What brings you here?” Elrond asked. “Not that I am not happy to see you without any reason. Though I think there is one, going by the look of you. – Tell me, how do the Southlands fare?”

“That is precisely why I am here,” she said as they started walking, red and golden leafs crunching under their feet.

Then she told him all about the dire situation they were in, and how badly they needed help. Elrond listened intently and patiently, but when Galadriel finished, asking if Elrond could bring a group of healers and experts of nature from Eregion, her friend’s features darkened.

“I am afraid the High King is loath to part with any of his advisers,” Elrond said. “He is still very much focused on ensuring we do not fade away.” Then he considered her and seemed to weigh an idea in his head, before finally offering: “I do know of a mysterious wizard who has shown up further in the North. Apparently he has restored a burnt down orchard back to perfect health. Gil-galad has asked me to go find this man and bring him back here – but perhaps I can reroute our return and bring us past– what do you call it now? Galador?”

Galadriel nodded. Elrond shook his head a little, a small, sad smile playing on his lips.

“I told you he was enamoured with you, your human king,” Elrond said. “Naming his capital after you…”

Galadriel ignored it  and quickly returned the conversation to this wizard her friend had mentioned.

Two weeks after that, Elrond finally arrived, in his presence a familiar face, though younger now than Galadriel remembered him.

***

“Mithrandir!” She exclaimed, standing at the bottom of the White Tower as Elrond and Mithrandir dismounted their horses.

Elrond looked confused – at many things he saw, but he addressed her first: “How did you know his name?”

“I heard it in your thoughts,” Galadriel lied swiftly, because of course she had not yet been introduced to him in this world.

Elrond seemed placated by this and made the formal introductions: “We call him thus, but the humans have taken to calling him Gandalf, the Gray Wizard.”

Mithrandir looked a little fragile, a little perplexed about all of it – her especially – and she dimly recalled that at this point, he had not been in Middle Earth for long yet.

Then she briefly wondered if he would be able to sense Halbrand’s true identity, as they were both Maiar, but when the two men met, Mithrandir gave no indication of it, so Galadriel calmed down. Elrond on the other hand, seemed uneasy looking upon the White Tower and the resting mountain in the distance. 

“You did all this?” He asked Galadriel as Halbrand led them back to the tower. “How?”

“The ring,” Galadriel replied and could tell that Elrond was still sceptical.

There was another thing ghosting across his face, something akin to fear, but it passed as quickly as it had come on and Galadriel could not continue to puzzle it out as Halbrand turned around and regaled Elrond with the jolly tale of how they had built the lifting mechanism, that would take his court and subjects up to the top of the tower without having to walk up a single step.

“I recall this from Khazad-dûm,” Elrond told the king, “they had these contraptions everywhere.”

Halbrand closed the gate of the little moving cage which would take them upstairs when Mithrandir had gotten in after some coaxing.

“It is a marvel,” Halbrand said and alerted the attendant below to begin the lifting process. “Bronwyn, my trusted deputy, came up with it. – I will introduce you to her. And you shall reconvene with the soldiers who gracefully stayed behind after the Battle for Reclamation and helped us so much here. I think it is high time we released them from their bond and send them back home with you once you leave, do you not agree, Galadriel?”

“Hm? – Ah, yes, of course,” Galadriel hurried and tried to focus back on the conversation.

She was in thought, wondering about Elrond’s weird reaction and distracted by the loose shirt that Halbrand had chosen for the occasion. Whenever she looked at him, her gaze would drift to his chest, covered with those light, curly little hairs, she wanted to touch so badly.

Lately, staying away from him had somehow gotten even harder than before. She thought it was the beard - after he had shaved it to look proper for the renaming of Mordor, now it had grown back in thick and dark and it reminded her of prickling lips and his teeth on her neck. 

As the lift reached the top and bumped to a screeching halt, she called herself to order. Elrond was standing two feet beside her and she would rather be dead than have him catch her lurking at Halbrand like a strung-out youth. She kept her cool then and paid attention, all throughout Halbrand showing their two guests around, once more laying out their issues and showing Mithrandir the extent of their misery by way of that gloriously wide and depressing view of what had briefly been called Mordor. 

“I know that in time, these grounds will bear fruit and life again,” Halbrand said to the wizard and Elrond when he was done with his explanation that doubled easily as a plea for aid, “but my people do not have that much time. We, Galadriel and I, were hoping that maybe you had ways to hasten the healing of our lands along. – Can you help us?” 

Mithrandir beheld him for a moment, then looked back at Galadriel, frowned and cast his eyes wide over the lands.

“I can hasten,” he replied, “but the effect will not come overnight.”

“How long until we can use the ground? Until the trees return?”

“A year, I believe,” Mithrandir answered. “Maybe two.”

“A year, we can last,” Halbrand decided, beaming. “What do you need?”

***

As Halbrand had Mithrandir set up with everything he required, saw the guests to their quarters and then took Elrond to meet his fellow elves, Galadriel took to her own quarters to get dressed for the elaborate welcome feast Halbrand had planned for that evening. 

It had been ages since she had worn such a fine dress as the light blue, finely draped garment that she had picked, and even had Swete come up and braid her hair for the first time in a long while. In her position as Commander, she would usually wear a plain dress with a thick leather west on-top and not cause a stir with her get-up, but tonight she was excited to look pretty again.

Maybe because she wanted to repay Halbrand a bit for the constant distraction he had caused her today, but if that was so, she was in no hurry to acknowledge it. 

Though after she saw Swete off and had wanted to go find Halbrand for one reason or the other she would surely come up with, on her way to the tower, she was kept from doing so by Elrond, who asked to speak to her in private, looking grim and worried.

“What is it?” She asked him, letting him inside her still spartan quarters and closed the door behind him.

“Many things,” he replied as he took a seat on her bed as she offered him. “I have a strange feeling about this place.” He looked around her room but she could tell he meant all of Galador. “Are you sure this is where you are meant to be at present? Now that Adar is gone, could you not ret–”

“There is still work for me to be done here,” Galadriel interjected before he could finish suggesting that she left Middle Earth once more. “I have to set King Halbrand out on the right path.”

“King Halbrand,” Elrond repeated, musing, something about it quite ugly and mistrusting, which was a new shade on him regarding the Southoner. “This is all very convenient for the man, is it not?”

“Whatever do you mean?” Galadriel asked him carefully and something about his demeanour made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up with fraught and sudden circumspection.

“Nothing,” he said quickly and got up from her bed to wander to her window. Her quarters were a few levels underneath the belvedere but still high up enough to offer a good view of the plains below. 

“There is a peculiar energy to this land, you must feel it, too,” Elrond said after a while and turned his head back to her, now only a silhouette as the sun stood high in the window, lighting him up from behind. “And that business with the orcs? Certainly, it is a king’s prerogative whom he allows refuge in his realm, but for you to stand by and watch as he hands the enemy a mountain dwelling to make their cosy home? And to help him with it all. – The tower, the mountain… I know you are strong and capable, maybe the strongest among all the elves safe for Gil-galad – but this power?! This ring’s power? I do not know, I just cannot help but wonder if it is too much for any one being to bear.”

So that was the cause of his worry, then? He was scared of her? Scared that the ring was too powerful, had corrupted her? 

“I am truly alright,” she said, walked over to him and squeezed his hands in both of hers, trying her damndest to look completely sincere and reassuring. “I appreciate the concern but I am fine, I promise.” She looked outside the window as well, blinking into the sunset. “As for the orcs… I do agree that it is an unconventional way of handling the situation, but so far Halbrand’s solution worked surprisingly well and it has spared us a lot of bloodshed. His people cannot sustain any more losses.”

“You must forgive me that I remain uneasy about it, still. About much of it,” he remained, dropped her hands and paced the room and Galadriel understood as he continued, that there was more brewing inside her friend yet, not just the worry regarding her increased powers. 

“Halbrand’s eagerness to make friends all around,” Elrond went on. “The rings, which were his idea as well. And the elven soldiers said they saw him fighting with a speed and dexterity that they thought was not human.”

Galadriel had to remind herself to breathe. Suddenly she was very alert, terrified that her trial was on the edge of failure. If Elrond became aware of Halbrand’s secret, Galadriel could not foresee where all of this would lead.

“What are you saying, Elrond?” She asked him slowly, carefully, charting possible paths forward based on his next reaction.

“I do not know, truly. But I have some worries about this new king,” Elrond revealed, the sincere puzzlement but certainty on his face making her stop where she stood. “It feels like he is hiding something.”

Galadriel took a deep breath, looked him squarely in the eye and declared, her mind made up: “I have a confession to make to you, my friend. – I have not been entirely honest with you.”

She took him by the shoulders and deposited him at the small desk by the window and then walked to the large wooden trunk at the foot of her bed to rummage around in it. Underneath her sleeping gowns, underthings and some slippers, she finally unearthed what she was looking for. A small scroll which she had taken and kept as part of her most secret possessions, ever since she had left Eregion with Sauron. She grabbed it, sighed and then presented it to him.

As she rolled it out, she hoped beyond hope that he would not become wise to where she had added new ink and manipulated it to look as old as what had been printed there originally. She had done this work meticulously back in Osgeende, on one of their first nights there, just in case. It was a contingency plan, a cover she had dreamed up herself without telling Halbrand, and she figured she would have to make him aware of it ahead of the feast tonight.

“Do you see this?” She pointed at the scroll. “This is Halbrand’s royal line. The scroll ends with his great grandfather who escaped to the Sea of Nurn. He then appears in an old ledger from a fishing village, I can bring that to you later but it is not the important thing.” 

She pointed at another name and hoped to the One that Elrond would not press her on the ledger because that was a complete fabrication on her part. Such a ledger did not exist. 

“This name… it is not that of a mortal, is it?”

Elrond studied the writing.

“Peldriron,” he read. “This sounds like an elven name. Though I have never known one in the Southlands by that name.”

“Neither have I,” said Galadriel – truthfully, because Peldriron was her invention as well. “But I had not known Arondir either before we met. He was part of the watchers here at the Elven Tower. I believe Peldriron was too, of one like it somewhere else in the South. And he sired Halbrand’s great grandfather.”

“Which means that Halbrand is part elven,” Elrond spelled out.

“Exactly,” Galadriel said. “No one knows except for Halbrand and I. He has asked me to keep it a secret for him.”

“Why?” Elrond shifted in his seat, looking up at her with a raised eyebrow. “Why the subterfuge?”

“Because he is afraid his people will cast him out,” Galadriel lied. “The Southerners have no great love for the elves and if they found out he was part of them, maybe the mortals would not follow him.”

“Eventually they will have to know,” Elrond cautioned. “When it turns out that he does not age like they do.”

“We shall tell them when the time is right.” Galadriel nodded reassuringly. “But for now, can I rely on your discretion?” 

Elrond considered her for a time and then finally nodded. Galadriel had to fight the sigh of relief that ran through her body. He had bought it.

“This still does not mean he is a good match for you,” Elrond said and she gave him a displeased look. “He will still die eventually.”

“I know,” she said, rather gruffly. “I have not forgotten that.”

Elrond stood up and raised his hands placatingly. “Forgive me, I do not mean to interject myself… or overstep. I am sure you have things well in hand here.” His face softened. “Thank you for your confidence. Halbrand’s secret is safe with me.”

“I thank you, friend,” Galadriel said, schooling her features to soften as well. “So, let us cease to worry then, at least for tonight. It has been much too long since we have seen each other last. Let us eat and drink and celebrate our reunion tonight.”

“And let not so much time pass until we meet again,” echoed Elrond and was gracefully, mercifully, thrown off course from his suspicions of Halbrand for the remainder of his visit.

To make sure things stayed precisely like that, Galadriel spent the next five years keeping him away from Galador.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE CALM

It was not like Galadriel had no great need to see Elrond, or had not missed him in the five years that they had only spoken in passing in quickly fading dreams. But it had remained smarter to keep him, and Mithrandir as well, away from Halbrand, just to be sure nothing of the king’s true nature could slip out. 

They had left after three days of their first and last visit. Three days which Mithrandir had spent riding across the length of the eruption’s distraction and spoke incessant incantations to the charred ground, while Halbrand spent them distracting Elrond from his feigned elven heritage by incessantly asking him for governing advice. Galadriel would have been offended that he did not think to pose all of his questions to her, but she had known that they were not really for Halbrand’s benefit at all.

She had breathed a long sigh of relief when Elrond took Mithrandir back to the High King in Eregion and then all that was left to do, was to observe the wizard’s work take hold in the land. Just as the gray wizard had promised, within a year, the lands around the tower and Orodruin itself had turned lush and green and fertile again. 

Within two years, the yield of their crops was too much for them to know what to do with, so they started engaging in trade with both Gondor and the dwarves in the Misty Mountains, who had readily entered into a friendly pact with the Southlands as soon as they had something to offer them in return. 

Galador itself flourished. It drew to it the scattered tribes of remaining Southlanders who began to join the city’s populace or settled close-by and along the big road which connected them to the Riverlands. Three years in, they raised a city wall of stone, only to break it down and raise it up anew another league larger in diameter to account for all the newcomers within that same year. 

Their original population had also grown quickly, and there were at least fourteen little Halbrands, seven Galadriels and five Bronwyns born and named for their namesake’s roles in creating this new peaceful home. Swete and Theo’s daughter who was born in the fourth year was called Galadriel, too, and her mother remained at Galadriel’s side as her Lady’s Maid, living alongside her husband and his mother at court in the tower.

Mithrandir’s magic in the meantime had almost worked too well. Because the ground was so alive that a foreign vine had begun springing up, climbing up the wood and stone houses, even creeped up the White Tower, covering it like veins. In the warm seasons, these vines sprouted silvery white, almost iridescent flowers that reflected the sunlight.

Whenever Galadriel gave herself a pause to consider, to look out of her window from her quarters at the bustling city below, she marvelled at the beauty that had sprung from the ashes of Mordor, marvelled too, how this was essentially Halbrand’s creation, and a little bit hers as well. 

Even the orcs had slotted into a strange but fitting space within all of that beauty. They delivered stones from their mines, fashioned bricks from the clay they chipped away deep in the mountain, which helped grow even Osgiliath grander and larger, and eventually, the humans forged tentative bonds with them. Though they were still fraught and a cause for conflict here and there, King Halbrand advocated for peace between the species and supported it greatly when the mortals began enlisting hosts of orcs as construction workers, to come to Galador at night and help raise up their buildings. 

Galadriel had to reluctantly acknowledge that even Urbul, the Leveler, had proven himself rather level-headed and sensical too, not that this was what had given the burly, heavy-set orc his descriptive name. She still cringed sometimes, looking upon his ugly face across the council table, but he mostly did what he was there to do; offer insights on the workings in the mines and give a face to the new reality of his kin, who were carving out a place for themselves in a peaceful land that had no need of their aggression but offered the freedom to discover what else they were capable of.

It turned out the orcs as a kin were brash and unruly still, but not destructively so. They were work horses at their core, and builders beyond this. They lacked finesse and creativity, decking out their mines with structures that were both boxy and brutal, but they worked fast and upon Galadriel’s first visit, Urbul actually took a touching sort of pride in showing Halbrand and Galadriel what they had built for themselves. Despite the terrible stench and reliable lack of personal hygiene, there was something homely within that rock of theirs and Halbrand’s smug reaction to this obvious realisation on Galadriel’s part was easier stomached by the merit of peace of mind that same realisation provided her.

Certainly, they were still a potential army at Halbrand’s back, and as Galadriel had predicted, they had come to love him in equal part to how they feared her, both in a very referential fashion. But now they knew serenity and freedom, and maybe when the time came that Halbrand might still wish to use them for evil and destruction, they would be reluctant to give up that peace. 

Not that Halbrand gave her any indication in those five years that he had any pressing desire to make a grab for further power. There was still darkness in him, she knew it because she felt it, and darkness in the world, too, but as far as she could tell – and she watched him closely – he was not scheming beyond growing his vined city and helping his people advance. 

Were it not for the other matter between them, half the decade they spent side by side, with her acting to all the world as his Chief Advisor and Commander of his army reserve, would have gone by within a blink. 

Times of peace and calm had that effect on immortal beings. Days of rest and calm tended to blend together, the passage of time becoming non-linear, bleeding into a singular block where only the seasons changing signified the passage of time. Watching the mortal children around her grow older usually helped to distinguish a little, but seldom more than that. Still, to Galadriel, what had transpired, and kept transpiring between Halbrand and her, sometimes made their days seem endless.

Because no amount of time managed to temper her desire, her want for him. They had found a way to keep from crossing any boundaries and mostly they succeeded in keeping apart from each other physically, each indicating to the other when their self-control threatened to slip. 

But sometimes, for whatever reasons, they would take turns in testing those boundaries, trying to pull at the other to make the lines blur. She could count the instances they had worn the other down in all those years on one hand, but these moments stood out to her like burn marks on an ancient scroll; perfectly sharp edges, setting themselves apart from the blurred, faded lines on the parchment.

It was those heated, liberating moments which made her doubt her resolve to stay away from him, because otherwise, he seemed to so staunchly keep on the right path, doing the right things again and again. Maybe it would not be to the detriment of his trial after all if they were to explore what else they could be, maybe he was already redeemed. But then the haze of lust would fade, and she would remember her reasoning. And feel for the darkness and know it was still there, alive in Middle Earth and alive at the edges of him. And he would have to fight that darkness on his own, if it was to have any meaning in the end.

***

Galadriel started out on their journey West to Osgiliath – where she would meet Elrond again after half a decade for a grand celebration of their temple to the One having been erected on a small island in the middle of the Anduin within the growing bounds of the city – and decided to keep from creating another burn on the scroll. 

She knew full well that the previous two visits to the Gondorian capital itself had been the catalyst for the last times their control had slipped. This was for two reasons, which really was one and the same for both of them: jealousy mixed with possession. 

Halbrand tended to run hot with it whenever Elendil and Galadriel got too close, noting the way his old Númenorian ally, much like many other men, would look upon her and want her near him always when they saw each other in person. The first time this had happened, had incidentally been the night when Galadriel discovered her own full potential of blinding jealousy.

It had been the first night of Elendil and Isildur visiting Galador with Eärien in tow for the first time. Isil was alight with reconnecting with Halbrand again and completely in awe of how fast and beautifully the Southern capital was growing. Eärien was still glum and quiet but seemed to have finally made peace with her new circumstances and for the first time met Halbrand and Galadriel with more than feigned courtesy. 

In the evening, Halbrand had decided for there to be a ball at the Great Hall in the White Tower, held in honour of their guests, and on the dance floor, led there at Elendil’s hand, the King of Gondor had posed her a question.

“Please forgive the insolence in my asking this,” he began, spinning her into a circle to the edge of the dancing pairs so they could not be so easily overheard, “but I cannot help but wonder what you and King Halbrand are to each other.”

“I am his advisor,” Galadriel replied as she had gotten used to, careful not to cause him any reason to doubt her words.

“And there is nothing else?” Elendil asked. “For unions of elves and men are not common.” Galadriel nodded, unsure of where he meant for this conversation to head. “And in your role as advisor, has Halbrand raised the topic of political unions to you yet?”

Galadriel’s eyes had flitted to the side of the dancefloor where Halbrand stood talking to Isildur, and next to them was Eärien, who followed their conversation with quiet interest, and Galadriel understood, as flames from within started biting at her insides. 

Now, en route to Osgiliath, riding beside Halbrand, she was steeling herself for their imminent arrival and those same flames to engulf her again. When they did arrive, the first person she saw was Eärien, decked out in the finest jewellery and dressed immaculately in a gown bound around her frame so tightly, it left nothing of the shapes beneath to the imagination. She was stunningly beautiful and Galadriel, though smiling at all who gazed upon her, felt her countenance darken and twist into something ugly and greedy. Her mood would not lighten all day. And her resolve of not crossing any boundaries with Halbrand were soon cast aside.

***

Osgiliath, much like Galador, had grown prosperous and mighty within the past five years and in addition to migrating men tribes, kept welcoming the odd Númenorian refugees from the sea who fled the ever increasingly dark reign of Chancellor Pharazon over the island kingdom. The last ship, Elendil told them over their dinner, an evening before the rest of the invited guests would arrive for the celebrations, had arrived with the grim news of Queen Miriel’s death during her last attempt to win back her realm. 

Eärien soon returned to the table after being forced by her father and brothers to sing to the court a song of their people and took her spot on the other side of Halbrand, where she had been strategically placed by Elendil. 

Every time Galadriel and Halbrand followed one of Elendil’s invitations to Osgiliath he acted thusly, putting his daughter close to Halbrand, waiting for things to fall into place the way he hoped they would. The King of Gondor was floating the idea of joining their houses, even if he had not yet proposed it with words.

Galadriel wondered why he had not come out yet but she suspected that he knew Halbrand well enough to understand that the man liked thinking of plans by himself. So, obviously Elendil hoped that by placing his daughter ever in the proximity of the Southern king, eventually Halbrand would choose her as a worthy bride of his own accord. Maybe it was for Eärien’s sake though, because maybe she was opposed to the union – though the way she looked at Halbrand during the remainder of the meal, a little dazed and a lot enraptured, suggested anything but.

***

Galadriel lost her appetite and ended up eating even less than Halbrand did. Halbrand, who of course knew just as well as herself what Elendil was doing, the other man’s clumsy attempt of matchmaking painfully obvious, after all. Halbrand, who when she snuck into his bedchamber in the dead of night, shifted to the right side of his bed and patted the now empty space beside him with the words: “I knew you would come. – You always come to me when she is around.”

Galadriel did not dignify his barely hidden gloating with a response. But she did climb into his bed, lay down on her side to face him and drew in a breath when he inched closer to her. 

His face had not changed in all their years together, but it had grown so familiar that she now knew every line and every freckle on it by heart. His eyes were bright, shining warm and expectant in the glow of the few candles that still lit up his quarters. He knew as well as her, what was about to happen.

Galadriel opened her mouth to say something, but he kept her from it, bringing up his hand to place his index finger light as a feather onto her lips. Then just as softly the thumb of that same hand hooked under her chin and drew her face forward a bit. The tilt of her head caused her mouth to fall open and Halbrand seized on the opportunity to add his middle finger to the first one laid there and pushed both inside, past her teeth and unto her tongue.

They tasted sweet, like the dates they had been served for dessert at dinner, a small serving of them stood on a tiny plate on his bedside table – and obviously they were not to be the only indulgence of his human form that night. For he shuddered and did not stop her, as she drew a lazy circle around his fingers with her tongue, then trapped them between her lips and then sucked, eliciting a quiet moan from him. 

Halbrand squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, as if to steady himself, and opened them again on a sigh. He used his free arm to grab ahold of one of hers, brushed down her skin until he had her hand covered with his palm and moved it down her shift, past her waist and to her stomach. 

Galadriel’s heart pounded hard as he pushed her hand further down until it slotted over the centre of her. She grazed his fingers in her mouth with her teeth and he drew in a sharp breath, moving her own fingers under his against her core under the flimsy fabric of her night dress. Soon, it would be drenched.

“Touch yourself,” he commanded hotly and withdrew his hand from hers so she would move it on her own.

They had been here before. This was the furthest they had gone yet to alleviate the tension between them when it all came to too much of a head. He would hold her and watch hungrily as she sought her own release and draw from her little gasps and sounds of pleasure like a starving man, desperate and insatiable. 

She sucked at his fingers with more fervour, which soon proved to be too much for his self-control, because a moment later, with a pained growl, he drew them back to wrap that hand around her neck, his thumb pressing down against the side of her windpipe. Galadriel moved her own fingers steadily against her own flesh, feeling the pressure build as her shift turned wet and slick.

She swallowed down a moan, but Halbrand was not having it. He shivered, breathed out harshly and squeezed her throat a bit harder. “Let me hear you, A'maelamin,” he murmured, the Quenyan endearment on his lips more of a whimper, a plea, than anything else. My beloved.

Galadriel obliged him, mewling, as she increased the speed of her movements below.

“Yes,” Halbrand hissed sharply and used his other arm to draw her to him, pushing his hips against her hand, so it was wedged between her throbbing core and his thigh, his hard length pressing against her leg.

With her own pleasure mounting, Galadriel would usually close her eyes in a moment like this, were she by herself. But usually, she would imagine him and because he was right there, pressing down on her neck and grinding measuredly against her thigh, she kept them open, locked on his. 

His pupils were so blown out, they were nearly all black. His hardened manhood grazed her leg over and over as he thrust it against her, and it was driving her insane. She wanted to touch him so badly, but she knew from experience that if she were to make a move towards it, he would push her away. She did not get to touch him, the same as he would not touch himself.

The last time they had done this, he had half-croaked to her in near agony that he would not come back from her touching him thusly. Now, he only canted his hips backward, to grab her night gown and bunch it up, making her remove her own hand briefly, so he could push it up to her navel.

“Go on,” he urged and nudged her arm so she would return her attention to herself, now without the barrier and she did as he pleaded.

She moaned, just as much for her benefit as for his because he ate it all up, fighting for breath and biting down on his own lips hard. The knuckles on his hand gripping her shift on her stomach turned white. He did not move his hips against her body again, though. She knew he would likely fall apart if he sought any further friction, and he would never allow himself that release. 

He only touched her again, unhanded her dress to cover her hand once more and mould her hand so two of her fingers were left extended and pressed close, and then guided them lower, using his elbow to tip her onto her back and wedge her legs further open so she could move them.

“So wet,” he mumbled breathlessly, and Galadriel cried out as she pushed her fingers inside of herself, started to work them in and out with a quick, unforgiving rhythm. “So weak for me.”

He continued to whisper curses and encouragements into her ear, egging her on. Some things he breathed to her in a language she did not even know. And then Halbrand settled on his side, letting go of her neck and observed where she worked on herself, transfixed and lustful. His features darkened, something possessive and dangerous flickering there as he watched her with a hunger that seemed out of this universe. 

“Godess”, he called her then and she gasped, because he had rasped it in Black Speech. 

He delighted in her scandalised reaction and delighted even more in the fact that she shook with a new, even harsher wave of pleasure upon his words. 

“I’d drown in you if I could,” he added, still in the words of darkness and then switched back to Quenya seamlessly. “Rwalaer.” My lustful one; pleasure seeker.

He tried to keep watching her still, even as he pulled his linen shirt over his head and then wrestled down his breeches past his erection, which sprang free, almost violently, and throbbed, swollen and demanding.

Galadriel could not help look down at it. The sheer sight of him, rigid and large, made her tremble, the sopping flesh enclosing her fingers clasped them tight with tremors as she was racing towards her peak. 

Halbrand did not attend to himself at all though. He kept his eyes and his hands on her, had undressed just for her, simply because he knew she enjoyed the visual. And she did, for all that was good in the world, the sight of him made her feral.  

She imagined him shudder with release, pictured white ribbons of his seed spluttering onto her stomach, even though she knew he would not let it happen, and then she looked back into his eyes again, canted her hips up to frantically fuck herself on her own fingers. With every thrust inside, she moved her palm against that most sensitive spot in the middle of her roughly and moaned, mewled, whimpered with it.

“Yes, yes, yes,” murmured Halbrand, mesmerised, and moved his hand to her thigh to knead her skin, scratch at it. “Come apart for me. Let me see you.”

His nose brushed up to her cheek as he matched her rhythm but would not join his hand with hers. It drove her crazy with yearning and then she asked him for the only other thing that he would do to get her over the edge.

“Kiss me,” she all but begged and he groaned, rolling his whole body against hers, pressing down on her belly with one hand and grabbing a fistful of her hair with the other… and then it was all too much.

Before she could temper herself, she was coming, hard. Her spasmed moans caught by his mouth and he shuddered and trembled in time with her release, too. She kissed him back with such passion, he had to physically pluck her off of him and she tried to fight him, bringing up both her hands to draw him back in, greedy and demanding now. But he overpowered her, and instead caught her fingers in his hand to bring them up to his lips and get a taste of her from them.

Between them, his cock stood alert angrily still and Galadriel was brazen enough to make a grab for it as he was distracted with sucking off her slick fingers – but he became smart to her intentions and was faster. He held her back with one hand and moved so she could not reach him. Then he caught his length in his own grip and wrapped his fist around it, pushing down hard, so hard it must have hurt, and he half whimpered, half growled as he buckled, staring into her eyes, forcing himself not to reach his own climax with simple and bare violence. 

It would take too much of him, she figured, allowing himself that release. Maybe even ten years’ worth of that cloud he had once told her about. He shook under the effort of keeping those years tied to him. She wanted to have it off him, that climax, wanted to see him reach the pinnacle and fall apart, his face contorted with lust and abandon, but she knew he would only give her that if he could bury himself inside of her to the hilt – and as much as she desired this herself, all of the reasons that kept them from doing it, were still true. 

So, she willed herself to calm down, watched him diminish his own state by torturous force, and finally, they both sank back down onto their backs, with nary a sliver of space between their flush, damp bodies.

She was sated, as much as she could be in their circumstance. He must still be strung out, and they were certainly both still frenzied. Halbrand was out of breath and wined a little, shaking with want, like she did yet with the fading aftershocks of her orgasm. Galadriel sneered before she could stop herself, in thought. Eärien might be pretty, she mused haughtily, but she could never turn Halbrand into this. She would never hold this power over him.

“I do not want her, you know that,” Halbrand muttered next to her, as if he had read her mind. “I want no one but you at my side.” Galadriel hummed, and turned her face to him. He did the same and added: “But if Elendil asks to join our houses, I do not know what I can tell him, how I can refuse.”

“He has not put words to it yet,” Galadriel muttered, wishing to placate her own worries most of all, “maybe he won’t, unless you raise the matter yourself.”

“Maybe,” Halbrand echoed.

“Just don’t encourage her affections,” Galadriel warned him, an edge to her voice that made Halbrand smirk.

“I do not,” he promised, though he sounded smug. “I can not help the effect I have.”

“Oh, do not start,” she scoffed. “You are not as irresistible as you think you are.”

“Aren’t I?” He challenged playfully and whipped around to put a devastating little pucker of a kiss onto her bare shoulder where her shift had rolled down during their escapade. 

She drew in a breath as he lifted himself up on his elbow, hovered close to her face and then leaned in for another languid kiss that she met so enthusiastically, he chuckled against her lips, putting her words to shame. 

It was over too soon, but at least he still remained close to her, speaking in a murmur.

“I think I have ways to distract Elendil for at least this visit,” he told her, and she understood his meaning instantly.

“You want to tell him about the shadow,” she stated, and he nodded.

They had both become aware of that new pull of darkness in the undercurrent of energies permeating Middle Earth’s bounds back in Galador – and at first it had been Galadriel alone, befuddled and then paranoid, by herself, stalking around Halbrand for a time. Trying to puzzle together, if it was coming from him. Eventually he caught her out, rummaging around the council room, trying to find some proof of dark machinations.

“It is not me,” he promised her, not even getting angry at her intrusion. “But I feel it, too. Something is afoot.”

They both had not been able to figure it out. At least, if he did, he did not share it with her. Galadriel herself had her suspicions but she did not dare voice them. Because, knowing what she knew about Morgoth floating around still evil and active in the Void beyond the Door of Night, he seemed a very likely culprit whom she did not wish to alert Sauron to, if he had not already thought of it himself. 

So, they had both of them decided there was some source of other evil gathering strength somewhere in Middle Earth and it was altogether confusing because Mordor was no more and the orcs were, by all accounts, busy building crude, blocky houses into their mines in peace.

Roping Elendil and Gondor into their quest for answers could as well distract the man. 

“Maybe we should ask Elrond and Prince Durin, too,” Galadriel mused. “Make a group effort of it. I am sure Elrond has felt it the same.”

“The least it would do is occupy them and keep any talk of possible matrimony on the wayside.” Halbrand nodded. “At least until we come up with a good reason why I cannot marry Eärien.”

“Maybe we could tell them about your elven heritage?” Galadriel suggested.

“Which she shares?!” Halbrand reminded her. “I appreciate your charming effort of subterfuge regarding my pretend family history, but even being more closely related to elven blood would only have me outlive her by a few hundred years, which is to be expected either way. – The only thing we could do, is use it as justification for another union.”

He gave her a look, and she understood his meaning.

“I cannot marry you,” she said. The thought was preposterous.

I would make you a queen, his voice reverberated in her head, his promise ages old but still fresh in her mind. And you, my king, she had replied. Though the reality of it still felt impossible. Even after all this time.

“I would never receive leave to,” she said.

“Funny how you still feel beholden to the rules of a High King who has all but deserted you for the second time,” Halbrand mused and absent-mindedly smoothed out her shift over her sex and the movement bristled, drawing her attention back to his hands, back to his closeness, back to the scent of his skin.

Halbrand continued his work of returning them to propriety, shoving his breeches back up, but before he could put his shirt on again, Galadriel raked her fingers across his chest. Then ghosted with her fingertips over the short, curly hairs there.

Halbrand halted his movements and narrowed his eyes at her.

“Are you trying to distract me from asking for your hand in marriage?” He asked her.

“Maybe,” she replied.

“Do you think that is wise?”

“Well, we have broken our rules tonight once already, what is a little more deviance?” She quipped.

“How could I resist when you speak of deviance?” He grinned and then dipped back down for another kiss.

She grabbed him and held him there but he would not put his body on hers again, though not for lack of her trying. Still, he simply kissed her back without hurry or urgency and they continued to do so with as much restraint as they both could muster. For what might have been hours. Long enough for the sky outside to turn such a bright, pale shade of blue that Galadriel eventually had to leave, just so they would not risk exposure.

She paused at his door, the handle of it already in her palm and looked back at him, sprawled quietly content on his bed.

“Rest,” she told him. “We have a long day ahead of us.”

***

The day was indeed long, though not unpleasant. Around midday, Prince Durin IV and his wife Dissa arrived with a small personal guard and an hour later, Elrond joined them. Galadriel could not say if she was more glad to see her friend or if the dwarf was. They were immediately met by Elendil and Halbrand and they got through a companionable luncheon together before talk could reach the topic of the shadow.

Though to her surprise, or maybe it should be the opposite, neither dwarf nor elf seemed particularly perturbed. Durin because he thought him and his kin were safe in their mountain and Elrond because he was used to the grief of the elves sensing their doom from every corner.

“You defeated Adar, the last would-be heir to Morgoth’s rein of terror, did you not?” He asked her dismissively. “And you say there has been no trace left of Sauron.”

Galadriel’s cheeks burnt but she nodded. “Still, you must feel it, Elrond, you must! There is a shadow and it is growing.”

“There will always be a shadow, Galadriel,” Elrond said quietly and it infuriated her that the others at the table seemed to agree with him. “We have had peace again for a while now. There will always be some darkness in the world – sometimes we need to let it rest. Maybe trying to drudge it up will only make it stronger.”

Galadriel fumed, but instead of causing a scene, she just huffed as she met Halbrand’s gaze across the table. He gave her just the smallest shake of his head, as if to say: It is not worth it now, wait a while and he will see.

He did see. They all did. That very same night.

***

The celebration was still in full swing, even in the wee hours of the morning, fueled by strong mead, wine, and other liquor. Even Elrond indulged in some song and drink and Galadriel managed to let herself be placated by merriment, happy that at least Halbrand now seemed more involved in thwarting Elendil’s attempts of marrying off his daughter to him, and she figured whatever threats their futures held, they would make themselves known.

Then the gate to the great hall flew open with such a noise that a collective shriek of startled surprise filled the air. The musician’s stopped playing. And there was the threat.

“Tormur,” yelped Durin from somewhere behind Galadriel to the dwarf at the helm of the group who now stained the polished wooden floors of the otherwise pristine hall with their muddy boots. “What is it?”

“The elves!” Tormur replied, out of breath as if he had ran all the way from the Misty Mountains. “A great big army from Lindon; they marched on Khazad-dûm. They took the Mithril! The king is dead!”

“Gil-galad,” Galadriel whispered and then ceased to breathe for a moment. 

Her head whipped around to Durin, then Elrond, who looked shocked and pained respectively. And then to Halbrand who stood next to Elendil. The mortal appeared struck and caught completely off guard by the bizarre news but Halbrand… Halbrand could not hide his reaction, not from her.

He knew, she thought in horror. The ring! Gil-galad’s ring!

It had poisoned his mind, of course! What else could it be? And of course Halbrand had known, had seen this coming from a mile away while Galdriel had blinded herself even to the possibility. Though now in hindsight everything made sense and she cursed her own incessant faith in her kin for shielding this from her conscience. 

It was not even like this was surprising! Not even Halbrand could have known it like she should have, having seen the very same thing unfold in the second trial. But she should have known! Gil-galad had done all this before and she had just refused to recall it, had just assumed that if she had a place in this version of history, that dark fate could never befall him. She had been so wrong! – And Halbrand! Halbrand had left her in the dark! Again! After everything!

They locked eyes and he must have sensed her great, sudden and untamed fury at the revelation – but before she could charge at him, Durin charged at Elrond, bellowing: “Deceiver! Traitor!” and attempted to climb up on the elf and pummel him to death where he stood. Galadriel started forward to separate them, as did Halbrand and Elendil and a few others. 

At last, the shadow had revealed itself anew – and this time, it had settled over her very own home.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: A BREWING STORM

For someone so little, it took a surprising number of people to get Durin off of Elrond, and not before he managed to punch the elf so squarely in the jaw, that he bled from his nose and his bottom lip split open. Galadriel barely heard as Elendil tried to calm down the other dwarves who had charged to their new king’s aid. She was too busy crowding Durin and Elrond to a back room that Anárion pointed them towards as Isildur placated the other guests in the Great Hall.

Everything was a loud, rowdy blur until finally, Anárion and Halbrand closed the doors to the antechamber behind them. Then it was only the dwarves who still yelled, demanding for their new king to be unhanded as Galadriel and Elendil held him back from attacking Elrond again.

“Everyone, please calm yourselves!” Halbrand hollered over them all and Galadriel felt the most subtle current of energy emitting from him, which actually did shut everyone up.

They would chalk it up to his sharp voice but after five years side by side with him, she knew Halbrand had ways to influence the very air around him if he so pleased.

He stepped into the middle of the room like an umpire, between Elrond, who was catching the blood from his face with a quickly reddening robe sleeve, and Durin, who was now being held back by his wife, instead of Galadriel.

“Let us try to bring some clarity into this situation,” Halbrand continued with easy, natural authority. “Elrond did you know of this elven attack on Khazad-Dûm ahead of time?”

“Of course not,” Elrond said quickly, his eyes trained only on the dwarves.

“And Durin, have your people given any indication to the elves that you could be a threat to them? Maybe even on accident?”

“No!” Durin bellowed and then Dissa pinched him in the arm, so he lowered his voice as he continued: “The king would not allow them to mine for the mithril, but we were not using it for ourselves. It is of no consequence for my father.” Durin took a breath and then corrected himself: “It was of no consequence for him. – But Gil-galad coveted it. So did you, Elrond.”

“I never would have believed he would go this far, I did not want to believe it,” Elrond said and looked troubled. “I have been worried for a while that he was not seeing reason when it came to the mithril but I never expected… he sent me to Lothlórien a while ago, I believe because I did not share in his paranoia. He was not himself in a long time – I think it was that ring.”

“What ring?!” Durin asked and Elrond looked at Galadriel wide-eyed the same time they both realized the slip.

No one but the elves and Halbrand knew about the rings. Galadriel looked to Halbrand, panicked, but they both knew this was not his secret to share, not his shame to bear. The decision to limit the rings’ power to just the elves had been Galadriel’s alone.

“I can explain,” Galadriel said then, because now that the dwarves had suffered the fallout from her decision, she at least owed them the truth.

There was a long silence after Galadriel had finished her explanation, during which she forced herself to keep her eyes up and on Durin and Dissa and stomach the disgust and anger on their faces.

“Let me see if I have heard you right,” Durin started gruffly, looking grim, “for half a decade you have kept us all in the dark about two magical rings with more power than anything else in this world – and you made them with an ore from our mountain – and then you kept them both for yourselves?! As if the rest of us are all children who cannot be trusted with the strength; dwarves, men-folk… your scrawny-looking mortal paramour.” Durin inclined his head towards Halbrand, and Galadriel caught the man’s eye upon being called out thusly.

She scoffed, indignant at the insinuation of a love affair and Halbrand frowned too, though she was pretty sure he had no issues being derided as her lover, he just did not appreciate being called ‘scrawny-looking’. Durin did not care for any of it though, he just kept barreling on. Not that Galadriel could blame him.

“And then your High King goes and loses his mind over it?” He gestured wildly between Elrond and Galadriel. “And kills my father and occupies my kingdom?!”

“I can only offer our sincerest apologies,” Galadriel said weakly, not that it did her any good.

“That is the second one then, there on your finger?” Durin asked demandingly. “Methinks it would be only fair to hand it over to us so we can fix this mess you lot got us into.”

“I would advise against that,” said Elrond.

“I think the time for your advice has passed,” barked Durin, his head red with anger.

It was clear he had not even begun to process the grief and terror of all that had happened, he was firmly stuck on fury for the time being.

“I can do better,” Galadriel told the dwarf, knowing that for better or for worse, this was the only path forward for her, the only way she could fix what she had broken: “You can have the hand that wields it. King Halbrand will tell you; I am skilled with its power. I can help you.”

“Or betray us,” murmured Dissa.

“I have no want nor need for that,” Galadriel told her, and felt a bit of what Halbrand must, whenever she staunchly and stubbornly accused him of foul play at every turn. “I have spent the last five years as advisor to King Halbrand. I helped broker the friendship between his people and yours, as did Elrond. – What the High King did is deplorable, and he does not act in the name of all elves. I will help and I will stand and fight at your side.”

“So will my army,” said Halbrand.

“And mine,” declared Elendil – and just like that, they had formed a military alliance around the dwarves.

“We shall drive Gil-galad’s cavalry out of your kingdom and then we confer again on how to proceed,” offered Halbrand and Durin considered them all for a while.

“So, you would make the rest of the elves your enemies to aid us?” He asked to clarify – and then looked to Galadriel and Elrond pointedly. “And move against your own king?”

“As far as I am concerned, an elf who marches on a hapless people who did naught but refuse access to a resource that is their own to decide what to do with, is not a worthy king to follow,” said Galadriel and could hardly believe those words were actually coming out of her own mouth. “I owe no fealty to such a king.”

Galadriel did not know if it was desperation setting in or sense returning to Durin, which finally made him pause and then grimly nod – but she figured it must have been a bit of both. Him alone, with just the few men that had arrived with the grim news, had no hope to take back Khazad-Dûm from however many elves Gil-galad had set up there to hold the mines. He needed the reinforcement and if he could have a ring of power on top of this – albeit on Galadriel’s finger – he was wise enough to take that offered hand.

Still, he had no great love for any of them and retired with Dissa to their children in their quarters soon after. Galadriel wanted to talk to Elrond, but he just shook his head at her sadly, ashamed as if all of it had been his own fault, and he told her: “Tomorrow, Galadriel. Please.”

She nodded and let him leave. Elendil and his sons had to attend to the still puzzled guests and so at the end of it, she and Halbrand remained, on opposite corners of the room, staring at each other.

“Say it, then,” he told her, and shrugged like it was a minor nuisance, the expected dressing down he was readying himself to receive from her.

“Not here,” Galadriel bit out, from between a jaw that was too clenched to allow for anything more.

Then she started marching out of the room, past the commotion inside, out onto the street and onward, out through the Northern Gate, across the wheat fields and into the forest until she reached a clearing. Halbrand followed her, three paces behind her like a good puppy, all the way.

***

A thousand little stars hung in the sky overhead, framed by treetops. Galadriel glanced up and held on to the intricate silver headdress which had been bopping precariously on her head the whole way over with how hard she had been stomping her feet, and readjusted it on her hair.

The moon shone down brightly but Galadriel did not need the excess light. She had no great desire to look upon Halbrand’s face at present, so she turned away from him when he stopped just a few paces away from her, sighing.

“Out with it,” he ordered eventually, after she took another minute to rein in her fury.

“You knew this was going to happen,” Galadriel said tightly, resolved to not let his insolence rattle her; he was going to try to distract her from getting to the bottom of his machinations by being impertinent, but she would not let him. “You knew Gil-galad would succumb to the ring’s power. Be corrupted by it.”

“I did not know it,” Halbrand replied, infuriatingly even keeled. “I expected it, but I did not know.”

“And you did not see fit to share those expectations?” For this she turned around to gesture at him, but his impassive, bordering at exasperated expression made her temper flare up so hotly, she had to move away from him, her eyes trained on the tree line. “You lied to me, again.”

“I did not lie. Like you said, I merely did not share my suspicions with you.”

She heard him approach her from behind and kept walking out of his reach, huffing.

“A lie of omission is still a lie,” she scoffed. “Sauron.”

“You haven’t called me that in a while,” he mused behind her, getting closer. “You only call me Sauron when you are displeased with me.”

“Can you fault me? All this time… I really thought we were past you trying to deceive me,” she said and stopped, only glancing over her shoulder at him. “How do you expect me to just let this lie?”

“Believe it or not, I rather trust you will forgive me,” he stated, full of easy confidence and came up to stand behind her, hovering close but not touching her.

“Why?” She asked him, breathing in his scent, only able to see his profile as he inclined his face to her, his nose brushing the side of her head and the headdress jingled.

“Because you love me,” he murmured and took a whiff of her hair.

He did not sound boastful or gloating or insolent now. He was merely stating a fact – and Galadriel knew better than to pretend he wasn’t right when he continued.

“You love me the same way I love you. Completely. Despite everything that should keep us apart,” he mused. “Forget you and I alone, this love is stronger than the foundations of the earth. Definitely stronger than… small disagreements or minor indiscretions.”

“So, you think my loving you, means there is nothing you are capable of that would reach past my forgiveness?” She leaned a little against his frame, could not help it, not with the previous night still alive and stirring in her memory.

“Oh, I believe I am capable of such things,” he rasped. “But this is not one of them.”

He seemed so certain of him getting off with a slap on the wrist from her, it briefly chased off the temptation he posed, simply by merit of her frustration, and she twisted around and shoved his shoulder. He did not move an inch, did not even sway.

“You are infuriating.” She hated that she sounded like she didn’t mean it, mostly because the slightly sheepish, smouldering smirk on his face made her lips twitch up into a treacherous, flickering smile – and so she swatted at his chest, trying to make her face into stone. “Why did you keep this from me? If you had only mentioned… I could have prevented this.”

“Which is exactly why I held my peace,” he answered and put a heavy hand on her shoulder. “I needed you to see it unfold for yourself. Without your interference.”

“See what?” She asked him. She knew what.

“You know what,” he echoed her thoughts. “You can say it.”

“You don’t trust the elves with that kind of power,” she stated, a fact. “You never have.”

“I trust one,” he clarified and tilted his head at her, letting his hand glide down her arm as she spoke until he reached her fingers, which he squeezed. “And if we had made a thousand rings, I would have placed each and every one of them on you. But you are not like the rest of them. – I told you a long time ago I alone can see your greatness and I think you can’t even see it yourself sometimes! That is why I needed you to watch.”

“So, you risked everything we have built in the last five years to teach me a lesson?” She plucked her hands out of his and put a pace of distance between them.

She was not done discussing this and his proximity was clouding her mind. And he looked so pretty in the moonlight.

“I risked nothing,” he told her. “I anticipated this exact outcome.”

“And what more do you anticipate?” She challenged, and not being able to smell his sweetly musky scent quite so immediately helped keep her head on straighter. “When we go to war and strike down the ring from Gil-galad’s finger, do you wish to take it for yourself?”

“You forget that you threw yours at my feet five years ago and I gave it back to you,” he argued, though with no great fervour. He had everything completely under control, an immovable mountain even in the face of her tempest. “I have no need of those rings. Not yet at least.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll see,” he shrugged and gave her nothing more than that, so she pressed.

She strode back towards him, stopped a few inches short and then leaned forward, narrowing her eyes, to prick him in the chest with her index finger.

“What is your angle here, tell me now!” She commanded.

“Can you not imagine that I do not always have an endgame?” He murmured, she scoffed.

“Of course, you do.”

“Maybe I am already in it?” He bent down a little again and caught a strand of hair from the side of her face and tucked it softly behind her ear. “Maybe I just wish to live with you and my people in peace.”

“And rid yourself of the last High King of the elves in the process?” She challenged.

This was the difference she had understood between them. They were both usually working on an angle, but where she put the domino pieces in line and tipped them over herself, one by one, he would take his time, setting up elaborate images made from the painted stones and then wait in the shadows for someone else to tip them over. Trying to anticipate which image would reveal itself on the other side of those pieces was a guessing game even Galadriel with all her knowledge sometimes felt ill-equipped to play.

“Do you hope to install Elrond in his stead? Rule through him by proxy?” She tried, imagining a future where Gil-galad was king no longer. “He is distrustful of you. Elrond. Did you know this? Suspicious of your identity.”

“Not half as suspicious as you fear.” Halbrand was not rattled. “He is way too occupied being jealous of your affections for me.”

And this was somehow the most preposterous thing he had said all night.

“He is not jealous,” Galadriel insisted, aghast. “We are like brother and sister!”

“That does not signify.” Halbrand shook his head and dragged his hand from behind her ear to her chin, cradled it tenderly. “Everyone who sees you, wants you.”

“I cannot help the effect I have,” she half-quipped, calling back to him saying the same thing in bed the night before.

“Still… if we made that doctored scroll you created, a public fact…,” Halbrand dropped his voice to a tantalizing whisper and now Galadriel understood why he had brought up Elrond being jealous at all. “Everyone would know that you are mine.”

“I am no one’s,” she breathed, her gaze dipping to his lips, then wetting hers.

“Yes, you are.” Her eyes flitted back to lock on his, dark and possessive. “As I am yours.”

“Cease asking me to marry you,” she ordered weakly.

“Cease declining the offer,” he murmured and then he kissed her, just once, just very, very softly, and let her go. He did not press the issue.

“We should return before we are missed,” he said instead, casually, as if the last ten minutes had not happened at all.

“I am still displeased with you,” she informed him, but did join him to keep step with him eventually as he charted their path back to the city.

“I would not dare assume the opposite,” he said playfully, and it took a lot from Galadriel not to smile and roll her eyes at him fondly.

***

Early in the next morning, Elendil had them all reconvene in the antechamber. Durin and Dissa looked worse for wear, like they had not had a wink of sleep, and Galadriel did not think they had. They looked grey and tired. At odds with the richly decorated chamber, with its large, colourful tapestries on the wall and heavy jewel-toned curtains, shielding them from the morning light. Dust particles danced in the air where the sun still shone into the room and it looked calm and peaceful – the opposite of what Galadriel felt.

She was hard pressed to find the right words to express her guilt over what had happened, but the dwarves seemed unwilling to hear her anyway, so Galadriel opted to keep in the background and let the others do the talking.

Halbrand and Elendil were the ones leading the strategizing. Elrond kept in the background as well. Durin and Dissa were too shaken up to be of much use and Elendil’s sons let their father take charge. So, the kings of Gondor and the Southlands went bit by bit through all of the tactical information that they would need.

They asked Torum, the dwarf, in and questioned him on what him and his fellow warriors had witnessed – how many elves had marched on the city? How many were still remaining there? Where were the captured dwarves held? Was there a third way into the mines other than the two known ones? Would it be possible to lay siege on the kingdom or was it self-sufficient? Where did Gil-galad go after the invasion? And most importantly: How much mithril did he manage to take from the mountain.

Tormur could not say, but likely enough to cause trouble. He also speculated that some elves would have had to have been left behind to mine further, because the mithril was not so easily and readily extracted.

“Do you think the High King could still be in the city?” Elendil asked one of the dwarven warriors but instead of them, Elrond answered.

“He would not be,” the elf said grimly. “He will have returned to Celibrimbor to use the ore.”

“To make more of them rings?” During asked.

“Maybe,” hummed Halbrand. “But we only made the rings because we had so little mithril. We had to stretch out what he had. Now, if he has one or two wagonloads of it, he could make a hundred rings.”

“He would not make a thousand,” Galadriel said, looking at Halbrand, speaking what truth they both new but he could not speak for fear of sounding suspicious.  “He will make one thing, one thing that is more powerful than a thousand rings.”

“Whatever he plans, we need to know more,” Elendil murmured, thinking out loud. “We need eyes on the mountains, too.”

“We can go,” Tormur offered. “Me and my men. We know the terrain; we can scope out what we need to know to strike back.”

“And I will go to Eregion and see what I can find out,” offered Elrond.

“But won’t he know?” Galadriel asked. “Gil-galad? Won’t he know you came from here? You said yourself he sent you away because he was growing wary of you telling him to see reason. – Why would he confide in you now?”

“Maybe he would, if Elrond could offer him something as a show of fealty, or something that he wants more than being certain of Elrond’s allegiance,” Halbrand mused.

“Bait?” Galadriel asked.

“Or a honey trap,” Halbrand said.

“What would that be?” Elendil asked.

“Information on you,” Elrond murmured, speaking it out loud as the idea was coming to him: “I bet he is unnerved by you having the second ring. I bet he fears that you will seek more power the way he does – that maybe you will come after his own, or the mithril. – If I can make him believe that the two of us do not see eye to eye and that I can deliver you to him not a threat, he should let me in.”

The look on Halbrand’s face told Galadriel that this is the very same idea he had also had – or the idea that he had wanted Elrond to think was his own. But to her annoyance, she did not have a better one. Mostly because it was sound and she was pretty certain it would yield results.

“Do you expect he has eyes on Osgiliath?” Isildur wondered. “Should we make a show of casting Elrond out, so he has a believable story to tell?”

“Excellent thinking,” praised him Halbrand and Isildur beamed, looking a lot young than his years upon the compliment

And so it was decided. Before the day was out, Elrond was thrown out with a big to do out of the palace and in the dead of night Torum and the other dwarves left to stake out the Misty Mountains. Safe, of course, for Durin, Issa and their children who stayed behind, now the new royal family of Khazad-Dûm.

In the morning, when Elrond must have already been half the way to Eregion, Elendil asked to speak to Halbrand in his private quarters alone.

***

Galadriel knew exactly why she was pacing back and forth across the clearing in the woods where Halbrand had requested for her to wait for him before he went to go see Elendil. She had no sense to even enjoy the crunch of the leafs beneath her slippers or chart the different hues of gold, red, purple, and green on the trees. It was a gorgeous, unseasonably warm day of the late harvest season and what part of Galadriel would always be beholden to the beauty and serenity of nature was singing. However, it was drowned out by foreboding.

Since the invasion of the Misty Mountains, the political landscape of Middle Earth had changed drastically; the arguably most powerful people was now in active conflict with the dwarves, leaving the men-folk in a bit of a dilemma. And not one that Elendil or Halbrand now could decide to resolve differently. For they had already declared themselves for the dwarves.

Still there was not just the matter of siding with one party of the conflict over the other, Galadriel knew it. It was also a matter of preserving the power they held themselves, no matter what the outcome of the original conflict would be. And to ensure the two sister kingdoms would fall onto the same side of the coin, there was only one sure-fire way to make certain they stuck together: a union.

She knew it in her bones before Halbrand even found her there. When he did, he looked like spring in the fall. His billowy shirt was the same sandy beige of her thick woolen dress, and his leather breeches the colour of the dried foliage on the ground. But his eyes – framed by combed, wavy brown hair – his eyes were green and hazel and glowed as golden as the low hanging sun, painting both Halbrand and Galadriel in wonderful shapes of light as it shone through the canopy of leafs stubbornly hanging on to their trees.

She knew it before he said it.

“Elendil asked me to marry Eärien to join our houses,” he finally said, his face unreadable.

Galadriel released the breath she had been holding, even if she should not have doubted the outcome and been remotely surprised now. She had known this was going to happen the moment Elendil asked for a private audience with the king of the Southlands. She just had no idea what to do about it now.

“What did you say?” She asked tonelessly.

Halbrand closed the distance between them and took her hands in his. She almost chuckled when, not for the first time in the previous five years, Galadriel looked at things from outside of herself, understanding that she was sick to her stomach at the moment because she was afraid Sauron, the Dark Lord, destroyer of worlds, was going to have to marry another woman. That she was terrified he had accepted the proposal extended by that woman’s father.

 “I said he had given me a lot to think about and that I would consider it,” Halbrand told her. “And that I would hold off on any decision until after we have taken care of Gil-galad.”

“But he is afraid the South might change allegiances when things come to a head,” Galadriel stated, completing his line of thought.

“Precisely.”

“So, he might not be held off this long.”

“He might not.” Halbrand nodded. “I might have a better idea.”

She perked up, studied his features and did not know what she would tell him if he asked her to marry him instead once more. But he didn’t.

“Maybe if I married Bronwyn,” he began. “It would make sense, given our history, and not offend Elendil. Bronwyn will not expect us to actually consummate the marriage because she still grieves Arondir and Theo and his children will become my heirs, so I do not have to lie with her.”

“Theo and his heirs will be dead long before you have need of an heir,” she reminded him, opting to bring up the logistics before fighting him on the contents of his suggestion.

“Elendil does not know that,” he reminded her. “And if we want to placate him for me not wedding and bedding Eärien and it’s not because I am marrying you, we would do better coming up with another reason why I will not age.”

Galadriel felt her features darken. Her forehead felt tense from how quickly it settled into a frown.

“I thought you would prefer the Bronwyn solution,” he said rather discouragedly, but then added with an edge to his voice: “I will not beg you to change your mind.”

Galadriel looked up into the sun and smelled the autumn air and then raised her hand to her lips to chew on her thumb and forefinger in thought in such a childish, helpless manner, her body did not even recall ever having performed such an action ever before. She had no idea whatsoever what to do.

She could not marry him. She could not. He was Sauron. This wasn’t real! He had to redeem himself on his own. He was Sauron! She could not really be with him, could she? What would it be like when the trial ended, and he would remember all of these things? Indulging in some scandalous carnal pleasure was one thing – you could hate someone and sleep with them and still save face, humans did it all the time.

But when Sauron would wake up on that altar and learn that she had married him because she could not bear the thought of someone else marrying him… that she married him and became his Queen because she loved him, she did not know how she could suffer the humiliation. He was Sauron! She could not marry him. For so many reasons.

“I cannot marry you,” she told him, and he was about to turn away from her again with a mix of exasperation and poise to challenge her, when she told him the one reason she had shamefully only now remembered, that would put a wrench into all of it: “Because I am already married.”

“What?” Halbrand was frozen to the spot, his eyes huge. “You are what?!”

“Married,” she repeated, and he stumbled a few steps backwards until he spotted a boulder nearby to sink down on and stare at her as she continued. “His name is Celeborn.”

“What, and he is around here somewhere, I take it? – Standing by for you while you play house with me for half a decade? Or is he in Valinor, awaiting your return?”

“He is missing,” she told him. “Most likely dead. For centuries. I think his body has long since expired. His soul awaits me in Aman, I believe. That is why I cannot marry again. We are only to have this one mate for all our lives.”

Halbrand frowned, held her gaze for a moment that he used to school his features into immovability and then he turned away, putting his elbows on his knees, and then ran his hands over his face, then through his hair.

“Did you love him?” He asked finally, after another deep breath. “Do you love him still?”

“I did,” Galadriel said quickly.

She thought of Aman and Valinor and Alqualondë and Lothlórien and her life with Celeborn and her child with Celeborn. And she remembered that across Aman, away from the Hall of Mandos where she currently lay on a stone table in the cavernous dungeons way, way below the fortress, he still waited for her to return to him. Right now, he must have been calmly standing by the water somewhere musing quietly intelligent and calm and poised about some beautiful sunset or something like that.

And here she was desperately in love with their greatest enemy. It was all madness.

“I do, I think,” she said after a long moment because she could not allow any other words past her lips, not if she ever wanted to think of herself as a good person.

Since none of this was real, she was not truly unfaithful of course… but the way she was so completely unable to deny her feelings for Sauron could not have been considered strictly faithful, either. Still, marrying him was a boundary she could not cross. How could she?

“And me?” Halbrand asked so quietly that she almost thought she had imagined it, but then he lifted his head and looked up to her. “Do you truly love me or are you just humouring me to keep me tied to your side like a desperate fool?”

Galadriel sighed. She could lie to him now; he would probably believe it. She would not have guessed that his reaction to the revelation of Celeborn’s existence would be this defeated sadness, rather than, say, taking it as a tantalizing challenge or reason to blow up and yell at her, accuse her of years of lying to keep him in check. But as it was, he only seemed sincerely desperate for some reassurance.

“I do,” she said simply. “You were right the night before last when you said it. I love you beyond reason. I love you completely. – But I cannot marry you. It just… would not be right.”

“But you do not want me to marry anyone else,” he said and slowly rose to his feet.

“What I want does not signify,” she said. “I know you do not want to marry anyone else. You won’t bind yourself to anyone like that, so you will find a way not to. You’re slippery enough for that when you want to be.”

“I would bind myself to you,” he said sadly. “I feel like I keep shouting that into your wind, but it always blows by you.”

“You never laid with me in all these years,” she recalled for him. “You never even let yourself– I know you wish to hold on to your power. Otherwise, you would have had me already. So many times.”

Halbrand made a face and took a few steps towards her. “That’s not why I never… We were agreed. For me to prove to you that I could be redeemed, we couldn’t.”

“And how would that change if we were married?” She asked.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged, rather helplessly and it sounded like for the first time, he really did not know what to do. “Maybe we were wrong.”

They reached somewhat of a standstill after that, an impasse which they both knew they could not talk their way out of, so they did not try. They simply parted, both knowing and somewhat contented by the fact that there was no version of events that would end with Halbrand marrying Eärien.

***

Of course, that did not keep Elendil from using whatever time in the coming week that was not spent in fraught meetings to prepare for the coming military move against the High King of the elves, to try and force a courtship on Halbrand and his daughter.

Galadriel had never spent so many nights consecutively sneaking into Halbrand’s bed chamber. The way Eärien would look at him during the days, with a certainty so solid that she would be his wife sooner rather than later, made Galadriel so afraid the young mortal could perhaps still be right after all, that she could not help but assert her power over Halbrand nearly every night.

But then that week ended, and more important things took precedent. The dwarves returned to Osgiliath and two days after them, came Elrond. It was hard to say who had the worst tidings, both of them promising a storm ahead that had the potential to ravage all of Middle Earth – but Elrond’s were personal.

“Gil-galad,” he said when Isildur had barely shut the door to the war room behind him. “He is completely corrupted. He wants Galadriel’s ring. He is convinced she will try to kill him to get to his.” Then he presented an intricately adorned dagger and put it on the table in the middle of the room. “He sent me here to assassinate you.”

Chapter Text

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: FROM THE DARKNESS

“He must be far gone to believe you will complete this task for him,” Halbrand murmured, looking from the dagger on the table to Elrond and then to Galadriel. “Considering your centuries of close friendship.”

“He is,” Elrond nodded gravely. “Eregion and Lindon are entirely rudderless. Gil-galad and the High Council stand together in his madness but the rest of the elves, the cavalry mostly, they are bound by his orders by something more than loyalty – I have seen it in their eyes. I think he uses the ring to make them obey him. I think he tried it with me, but I could convince him that I was one of his acolytes.

Elrond grimly sat down at the table, ruffling his hair. “He hates you, Galadriel, without reason. He says he cannot allow another ring of power to exist in the world. He wants to destroy yours and you along with it. And have one ring and one crown to ensure the elven supremacy over these lands. So, there can be no more threat to our kind. Not even if it is posed by one of our own. Not even if the threat is entirely in his own warped mind.”

“One crown?” Galadriel repeated.

“He did like the crown concept back in Eregion,” Halbrand reminded her. “Before we made the rings, Celibrimbor wanted to make the mithril into a crown. It sounds like the idea stuck.”

“Celebrimbor is supposed to fashion it entirely out of mithril, no alloys, no diluting its power,” supplied Elrond. “It is not without challenges and so far, Celibrimbor has not found a way to complete the task – but it is only a matter of time.”

“And when he has the crown?” Elendil muttered.

“I imagine he will not just be able to control his soldiers,” Halbrand mused and then looked at each of them slowly. “Elven supremacy, as Elrond said. We shall all fall under the rule of High King Gil-galad – but even so, I’d wager he will find cause to mistrust anyone not of his kind. It will be the end of us all who we are not elves.”

“I knew the ore was going to change the world,” huffed Durin and Dissa nodded beside him. “We should have mined it when I first suggested it.”

The mithril has to be destroyed, Galadriel thought in that same moment, but she did not voice the thought aloud, because she had the good sense to try and resolve only one source of conflict at a time. Still, she was certain that the power of this mithril was too dangerous to be allowed to exist. Either that, or every people in Middle Earth had to get their fair share of it to balance the scales. Though Galadriel preferred destruction over distribution. This much power should not be left to thrive in the world, not without a means to fully control it – there was too much chaos to be birthed from such a resource left for too many hands to grasp it.

She had just finished the thought, when her eyes flicked to Halbrand, and his gaze locked upon hers. She could tell by his face that he thought the exact same thing. And then she gasped, because suddenly she understood the path her own thought truly entailed. A thought that Halbrand – that Sauron – shared. Or what such a thought could lead to. She thought it again, slowly.

This much power should not be left to thrive in the world, not without a means to fully control it – there was too much chaos to be birthed from such a resource left for too many hands to grasp it.

Halbrand furrowed his brow, undoubtedly irritated at Galadriel’s quickly changing expression; from shock, to disgust, to wonder and then back to shock. Sauron had taken the wrong path based on this approach, had chosen control over destruction and had used that control in a terrible manner. But the basic approach of it, the sense of his reasoning; it was now crystal clear to Galadriel, too.

She had never understood it that same way ever before, not in all her lifetimes. Halbrand must have eventually understood some of what her reaction meant, because next thing, he pursed his lips and inclined his head at her with a little shrug, as if to patronizingly say: See, now you got it. She hated him for that a bit.

No one else around the table was aware of their little, silent exchange though, too busy throwing together all that they knew to determine the proper way forward. What they had learned from the reconnaissance mission of the dwarves to the Misty Mountains was little, yet most of it helpful.

They could not gather how many elves were still in the mountain, though it must have been around a hundred, with how frequently they changed the heavy guard at the main gate. The East Gate, perilously high in the mountains, with only a steep walk down the foot of the hill where the forest of Lothlórien awaited, was the weakest point – staffed with just two elves who changed guard just once a day and would thus likely be tired and wary come nightfall.

“He gave Lothlórien to me for that reason, I believe,” Elrond mused. “Even with my doubts, I do not think he could fathom my stepping out of line, not with my lower birth binding me to obedience to stay in the High King’s good graces. He thinks with the forest at his back, I’ll keep a save escape for the elves in the mountain, should there be an attack on the front.”

“So, we take the back door,” Halbrand finished the trail of thought, raising his eyebrows and leaning back into his chair a little. “A surprise attack?”

Elrond nodded.

“I expect they will see us coming up the mountains from a mile away,” Elendil said, discouraged. “They have the high ground, even if it is just two guards. They will alert the rest.”

“Then we have to get rid of those guards first,” Isildur said, looking from his father to Halbrand for approval.

“It could work if we strike quickly, with the help of creatures who are at home in the rock and the dark,” Halbrand suggested.

“You wish to involve the orcs,” Elrond said, before Galadriel could and she squared her jaw.

“They have sworn an oath to us to never hurt another living being,” Galadriel reminded him sharply.

“I do not mean to deploy the reserve,” Halbrand said, an impatient edge to his voice. “Take Urbul and one of his men, no one else need know they were even involved. – But they can navigate the mountains quicker and quieter than any of us could hope to.”

“I will not sanction orcs killing elves,” Galadriel insisted.

“Subdue them, then,” Halbrand offered. “We just need to get past them. – But may I remind you that this will be a battle, a real one. Elves might die. Just like men might. Just like dwarves have. And we have not chosen that path. Gil-galad did.”

Galadriel nodded, though it cost her. If it was anger at Halbrand or shame for her kin, she was not all too sure. It was probably both. So, she held her peace as the others decided on how many men they could covertly sneak into Lothlórien and about how Halbrand would get word out by bird to Bronwyn to send two hundred of their most skilled men and how Elendil would supply two hundred of his own.

They would send Urbul and another orc just before dawn to remove the two elven guards from the East Gate and then assemble there in secret before taking the mines back by force. It was a solid plan. But Galadriel always cringed when there was talk of killing elves. She could not stomach it, she could not let it happen, not without trying to find a path that could save lives.

“Elrond, you said you believe Gil-galad uses the ring to control his soldiers?” She piped up after Anárion said something especially glib regarding disemboweling the elves that would hold the entrance to the mithril chamber, unable to remain quiet any longer.

Elrond nodded.

“So, is there a chance that they might act not of their own volition and would stop the occupation if the bind to their master was lifted?”

“There is a possibility,” Elrond said, shifted in his seat and narrowed his eyes. “What are you suggesting?”

“If we can get to Gil-galad in time before the crown is completed,” Galadriel said, talking as her plan formed, “then we can take the ring off of him and free the elven soldiers from his compulsion. There will be no need for bloodshed.”

“How do you suppose to get close enough to him?” Elrond asked. “There are guards, and his High Council believes and enables his paranoia without him even having to use the ring on them. They are true believers. And there is Mithrandir…”

“Mithrandir has been a part of this?” Galadriel heard her voice quiver but could not rein it in, the shock and despair at this possibility knocked the wind out of her. This could not be!

“No,” Elrond said, and Galadriel could feel the ground beneath her feet return. “He is the one who made me skeptical of the High King’s change in the first place, but he still thinks he can cast out that demon of power that has taken hold of Gil-galad. That is why he stays close and tries to mitigate the damage. But Mithrandir does not know Gil-galad as well as I do – or for as long. – The man is lost to his fear. He will not return from his madness.”

“But do you expect Mithrandir to guard the king against intruders?” Asked Elendil to clarify.

Elrond shrugged somewhat of a nod, as if to say he could not safely guarantee the opposite. For a moment, there was a pensive silence. Then Galadriel locked eyes with Halbrand once again. And he knew in that exact same second where her mind had gone.

“No,” Halbrand said into the quiet. “Absolutely not.”

“What?” Anárion asked, looking between the two, as soon so did the rest of the table as well.

“What if we do not intrude, then?” Galadriel asked into the round, ignoring Halbrand.

“No!” Repeated the King of the Southlands. “It’s too dangerous.”

“It is the smartest way to go,” she argued.

“What on earth are you all yapping about?!” Bellowed Durin.

“She means to go as bait,” Dissa told him a little exasperatedly. “The High King sent Elrond here to kill her. If he returns with her body, Gil-galad will open his doors to them, no guards and no problem.”

“Oh. Yes, well, that does sound like a good plan.” Durin shrugged and nodded appreciatively, then took a swig from his mead. “Is the matter settled then?”

“No,” Halbrand remained, stubbornly. “It is not settled. – It is too great a risk. What if something goes wrong and we hand Gil-galad not just our most powerful ally but the second ring in tow?”

“I will not take the real ring with me,” Galadriel huffed, now herself sounding impatient.

“He will expect you to have it on you,” worried Elrond, scratching the side of his face.

“I will have one on me,” Galadriel well near groaned, wondering why everyone was being so slow to follow her plan.

“A forgery.” Halbrand understood. Finally.

“You helped make the originals, I am sure with your talents, you can create a replica,” Galadriel said evenly.

“And who is to guard the real one?” Halbrand asked and only Galadriel could see the almost giddy curiosity flicker in his eyes.

He had not expected her to suggest this, and despite the fact that he obviously did not agree with her strategy, he must have been burning to see whom Galadriel would bestow the honor of carrying her ring on – which they both now knew had the ultimate power of seduction to the darkness. Halbrand must have wondered who she was either willing to sacrifice or trusted enough of their virtue and strength of character to entrust the ring with.

“Elendil,” she declared, in all honesty just to vex Halbrand a little – but they both knew how the Gondorian king would react, so it did not signify much.

“No,” Elendil predictably said. “Thank you for assuming I would be as strong as you in resisting its corruption, but I would rather not test my limits. – I propose it should remain with Halbrand.” All heads at the table turned to the Southern king who feigned his surprise near flawlessly. “A king who parts with half his kingdom to repay a debt as easily as taking a breath cannot have such a will to power to fall to the rings. I think it needs to go to King Halbrand.”

Galadriel watched Halbrand make a bit of a show of accepting the honour to the others agreeing at the table – even Durin let it happen, undoubtedly himself afraid of becoming like Gil-galad – and she wondered if this was also a part of Halbrand’s long game. If granting Gondor to Elendil five years ago had been just for this moment after all: to be able to prove that he was not power-hungry and could therefore alone be trusted with it. Little did they know…

Halbrand inclined his head to the table and then turned to Galadriel to catch her eye with an unspoken command. He needed her to perform her allegiance for the crowd now. Everything else would cause suspicion.

“Or King Halbrand, then,” she said and nodded. “I simply did not wish for there to be the appearance of favouritism.”

“Why would they think this,” Halbrand mused. “You are merely my advisor, are you not? If anything, you could make the most worthwhile attest to my character.”

Galadriel pressed her lips together and breathed through his attempt of rattling her thus in company. He was teasing her, she knew it, making a show of his availability and their lack of commitment to each other to Elendil. If it was because he was unhappy with her not marrying him or for her plan regarding going to Eregion, she did not know, though she assumed it was likely a bit of both.

“I believe you will wield the ring well and only when you need to,” she said, a warning in there that was for Sauron alone. He held her gaze and nodded like he understood exactly.

Then she took off her ring, walked around the table to stand beside him and put it down before him. He caught her hand in his when she meant to retrieve it.

“We will discuss that plan of yours in private,” he hissed, squeezing her wrist tight, and though she was rather certain that he had meant for it to be quieter, she could tell by the my eyes on her that everyone had heard it word for word.

She did not appreciate him using that tone with her, least of all in public, but as the council dispersed for the day, she could not help the sense of triumph at the way Elendil had watched them after that interaction in a manner that was both curious and dispirited.

This little comment had made it obvious to everyone who looked upon them that there was still more between King Halbrand and his elven Commander than they would admit to. And maybe Halbrand had made it so known entirely on purpose after all.

***

Though it was clearly not only for the benefit of the council. Because afterwards, as the sun threw long shadows into her bedchamber when she had just finished changing for dinner, he let himself into her room and looked sullen. He obviously had meant it when he said they were going to discuss it futher in private.

“I don’t want you to go,” he told her right after closing the door behind him and put a near perfect replica of Nenya on her desk, which he must have smithed in the meantime. “Least of all without the real ring for protection. – I considered it, but I think it is unwise.” Galadriel did not move a muscle on her face, quite deliberately, which made Halbrand come closer, beseechingly. “I promise to kill no more elves than absolutely necessary.”

She huffed. “It is not just about that. – It’s the same as it was with Adar. We need to take out the leader. The fish rots from the head down. If I can neutralize Gil-galad, we neutralize the elves.”

“Until someone else takes on his mantle,” Halbrand sighed. “Now with all this mithril… it is just a matter of time before the next one makes a grab for it.”

“We have to get rid of it,” Galadriel said, and he did not fight her on it. Maybe because he agreed, maybe because he did not want to argue at the moment. “But first, we have to contend with Gil-galad.”

“Let me do it,” Halbrand said then and crossed the room to grab her hands and bring them up to his mouth. His breath was hot on her fingers as he kept speaking. “I can move like the wind to Eregion and take him and his whole host out.”

“Then everyone will know Sauron is back,” she whispered and did not give herself time to wonder why exactly she was so opposed to this.

The trial might be over a lot faster if he would have to face everyone knowing his identity, but there was something inside her that wanted to just forget the trial and hold on to what they had. That part was obviously stronger than anything else. Because she moved their hands to his chest and tilted her head at him, all but begging.

“Please don’t interfere,” she bid. “I need you and Elendil to make sure Khazad-Dûm is liberated with as little bloodshed as possible. I have Elrond and I am strong. I will succeed. I will be fine.”

“That is not good enough,” Halbrand said. “You are charging headfirst into a room full of enemies and you want to do it defenseless. And Elrond cannot help you. – You need to get the wizard on your side. Before you set out. Take Elrond and reach out to him, win him over to our cause. I cannot possibly let you go otherwise.”

She wanted to tell him it was not his decision but then again, he was so powerful that he was going to make it his decision. She had no illusions that he wouldn’t shirk the body of Halbrand temporarily to turn into a killing wind or a giant demon or a deadly little cat to rip Eregion to shreds if she could not appease him and convince him that she could handle herself.

“I will be alright,” she reiterated, promising him. “I will talk to Mithrandir, and I will be prepared.”

“You better be,” halbrand whispered. “If anything happens to you, I don’t know what I will do.”

“Marry Eärien?” She quipped, hoping to lighten the mood but Halbrand obviously did not think she was very funny.

He did not even smirk. He just sighed, pulled her against him and kissed her head.

“Take care of it,” he murmured and kissed her head again.

Then he left, and ten minutes later Elrond was at her door, asking why Halbrand had told him she had sent for him.

***

Reaching Mithrandir was incredibly easy, almost like breathing. He was built for this kind of communication and the past five years had turned the slightly shy, still puzzled because newly incarnate Istar, who had healed Mordor, into more of the wisened and deliberate wizard she had known for the last couple of centuries. He was not surprised to see them in his daydream. Not Elrond and not Galadriel, who happened to not be half as dead as she had been ordered to be.

He listened as Elrond laid out the plan for him, put all the cards on the table – and because Mithrandir had always been one to be won over with good arguments – when Elrond was done, he agreed to side with them.

“I am sorry, my friend,” he told Elrond. “That it has to come to this. I really rather hoped I could reach Gil-galad past the poison that ring brought upon his soul. But I realise now that it is too late. – I can mask your vital signs against detection, Commander Galadriel. I can make it so that Gil-galad comes to look upon your body without his guard. I will help you and hopefully we can keep this shadow from spreading any further.”

***

After dinner, she told Halbrand of this success and quickly understood that anything less would not have pacified him. And even so, it cost him, finally giving his full consent to the whole operation and agreeing with the rest of the council that they should move as early as the morning, so as to not give Celibrimbor any more time to fashion the crown.

In the night, it was Halbrand who visited her for a change, and she let him in her bed, watching him settle in beside her. He did not take her, or grab her, or kiss her wildly. Instead, he pulled her onto his chest and smoothed out the fabric of her shift, drawing circles onto her back. His whole body was tense, even though he tried to be languid and calm. It was no use.

“Rest,” she whispered and lifted her head from his chest to look up at him.

“I don’t rest, you know that,” he sighed, and seemed tired to the bone.

“You don’t sleep,” she corrected him and sat up. “But you can rest.”

Then she laid back down onto her side, put out her arm and used her free one to bully him closer. He followed easily, although he seemed to be confused about her aim. Finally, she managed to get him where she wanted him, which was in her arms, clasping him close wrapped around him, pressed flush with her front to his back.

She held him then – and for a moment she could tell he was uncomfortable with this change in dynamic, did not like to be this weak and vulnerable with her. But then he relaxed on a sigh that seemed as deep as the ocean and he settled in, pulled her closer by the arm and nestled against her frame. They laid there together, entwined on her bed, and did nothing else but listen to each other breathe and count their restless heartbeats.

“You have to come back to me,” he whispered, hours later when the sky was paling in a way that told them they did not have much longer together. “Please come back.”

“I will,” she said and kissed the tip of his ear because it was the closest skin she could reach. “I promise.”

Then the night slowly drew to a close, and an hour later they had Elrond pretend he was sneaking out of Osgiliath pre-dawn, putting Galadriel who tried to stay as still and as silent as possible, wrapped in a carpet, onto the back of a cart, and rode with her towards Eregion.

***

Galadriel kept as motionless in that carpet as the bumpy road towards Ost-in-Edhil allowed, and used the dead time to walk through her plan of attack again and again in her mind. She tried to foresee any different scenario of it unfolding, over and over, until she was convinced that she was prepared for anything at all. And then finally, she let herself sleep, both because she knew her body needed it after the previous night without, and because the worrying was making her brittle and she simply wished to not exist for a moment.

When she opened her eyes again, she was still in that carpet, but around her she heard her people. Even if it was the middle of the night in Eregion, there were still elves about. On the main road to the city, they passed hosts of them, as if they stood in waiting of her arrival, murmuring about her death. They sounded hushed and terrified and she felt re-affirmed in her plan once more. These elves did not believe in Gil-galads paranoia! They were being led astray against their will! And Galadriel needed to liberate them as much as Halbrand had to help liberate the dwarves.

It was there, still immovable on that cart, that Mithrandir became aware of Galadriel’s proximity and spoke to her through their mind’s link.

“Are you ready to die, Galadriel?” He asked her, a disembodied voice in her brain.

“I am,” she confirmed – and the funniest thing happened.

Mithrandir spoke an incantation, somewhere in Ost-in-Edhil, and en route, Galadriel felt her spirit disengage from her body. She was at once still somehow attached to it but also everywhere else all at once.

She could soar, seeing Elrond on the horse that pulled the cart, looking troubled and worried. She could see Eärien in Osgiliath, standing on the steps of the new temple in the pitch-dark night, her face cast in a frown in the flickering light of large torches, undoubtedly having just prayed for the safe return of her brothers and father.

And she saw Halbrand and Elendil, in hiding at the bottom of the Misty Mountains, waiting for Urbul’s signal that it was time to approach. And because she could tell they were still a while out from Ost-in Edhil, she decided to stick around Halbrand for as long as she could, and see how their side of the mission was advancing.

***

Behind Halbrand and Elendil, who both stood as lookout, their men were hiding in the woods. Elrond had ensured they would use a track through the forest the other elves in Lothlórien did not frequent and so now, they were all just sitting in waiting, ready to start up ahead the mountain as soon as Urbul gave them the signal. Him and Grogol, another orc, would sneak up on the guards and so hopefully, their approach on the mountain would go undetected.

Galadriel, hovering above all, felt reminded of the first and second trial, when she would just observe Halbrand. Only now, she knew so much more of him than she had before. About him, about his methods. About what drove him. Had she witnessed him in the first or second trial, doing the exact same things as he did now, she would have had a different image of him.

She would have seen him sternly focused, almost excited for any upcoming violence, would have called his quick pace up the cliffs when the call to action finally came, murderous. But now she knew him, she could tell he was anxious. She might have called him careless, when Urbul stood atop the lifeless body of one of the guards – the other one was merely incapacitated, bound and gagged – but now Galadriel knew from the way Halbrand squared his jaw that he was not happy about the killing. Maybe it was only because he had promised her not to kill any more elves than necessary – but all the same, it mattered to him, and she never knew that before.

She watched, too, as Halbrand nodded his thanks to Urbul, ordered him and Grogol to mind the entrance to the mine – and then got in close to alert them to the fact that the sun was going to come up soon and to stay out of the sunlight. It was touching, really, mindful, and Galadriel had no idea if he did it for anyone’s benefit – she knew he had no idea she was watching, so it was definitely not for hers.

And if anything, Elendil, who was directing their men to slowly advance up the mountain and join them without creating an avalanche, seemed irked by the presence of the orcs, so it was not to get into the exiled Númenorian’s good graces either. Maybe Halbrand wanted to further endear himself to the orcs. But maybe… maybe he just was not as calculated as she always made him out to be. Maybe some things he did because beneath all the scheming and his dark nature, there was light. Maybe a light all of his own, not just the parts of it he needed her close for.

Slowly, careful not to make any alerting noise, the Gondorian and Southlander battalions crept into the mountain and Halbrand looked grim. Before, Galadriel could have called it imposing, threatening or downright evil, the way he glowered in the dim light. But now she knew he was just deeply focused, trying to listen for signs of detection.

***

Then, Galadriel was briefly distracted, as Elrond rounded a corner and entered the innermost ring of Eregion’s capital just as the first rays of sunlight hit the tops of the city’s towers. Soon they would reach the grand palace.

***

When she diverted her attention back to Khazad-Dûm, Galdriel followed the noises of steel hitting steel as Halbrand and Elendil led the charge on some ten elves guarding the prison of the mines where the remaining dwarves were being held. Galadriel counted three dead elves and seven subdued or incapacitated  when it was all done – and then the dwarves were free and who of them could, joined the liberating forces while the others made for the East Gate.  Everything after happened really fast – until it didn’t.

In the mines’ great, main hall, the humans and newly freed dwarves attacked the elves as one who were scrambling to meet them from all sides. Galadriel panicked just looking at the numbers.

The elves were outnumbered, though the more skilled warriors. This had the potential to be a bloodbath and she wished she could hurry Elrond along to get them to Gil-galad faster. She knew these elves did not want to fight and die there in the darkness – they were being compelled to, made to believe a false truth. But Elrond was slow, elves blocking his path in the city as everyone kept whispering about whose dead body he was bringing to the High King.

***

In Khazad-Dûm, dwarves and men had the high ground, assembling on one side of the main path bridging the endless pit beneath, while the elves fell into formation on the other. A general emerged just as Elendil and Halbrand stepped up to the front of their men.

“We do not want bloodshed,” declared Halbrand, his voice bellowing, echoing across the rocky halls. “You have unrightfully claimed this kingdom and we demand that you leave it at once. There is no need for fighting – just pull back and return this city to its rightful owners.”

“We have orders to hold this mine,” replied the general, like an automaton. His eyes were glazed over, his body rigid. “We have orders to guard it with our lives.”

There was static in the air, a violent energy about to burst and Galadriel half did not want to look, and half had to. Elrond was still no closer to the palace. They were going to fight – elves and men and dwarves. It was going to be mayhem! She wished she could breathe in this state, so she could hold her breath and feel like she could at least control that one little thing. But then, just before she thought the elven general would give his archers the go ahead to fire – something grumbled, low and foreboding from the deepest bowels of the mountain.

If Galadriel could have gasped, she would have. Halbrand did. And the elves below seemed to understand intimately what was making itself known from below, for the general called out “RETREAT” before a single arrow was fired at the opposing forces.

“They are retreating,” Elendil supplied superfluously.

“But not from us,” cautioned Halbrand and then turned to the mortal: “Lead everyone out the East Gate, NOW!”

Then he turned around and gave the order to their men: “Fall back! FALL BACK!”

The growling got louder, joined by a rhythmic thumping that shook the very foundations of the richly fashioned-out mines.

“What is this?” Asked Elendil, as Anérion called to him from a higher terrace.

“Balrog,” answered Halbrand to the Gondorian king’s startled and horrified expression, and pulled out his sword.

“Let us go then,” Elendil urged but Halbrand remained in place.  Elendil understood. “You cannot mean to face the creature alone!”

“I do and I will,” Halbrand declared grimly and then held up his gloved hand, Nenya sparkling despite only the faintest light in the mines. “I’m the only one who stands a chance. Get the men out and don’t come back!”

“Halbrand!” Elendil tried to argue.

“GO!” Halbrand barked over the next, bone-chilling roar from the depths and Galadriel thought she could see Elendil’s eyes glaze over for a moment, hit by Halbrand’s own compulsion, and then the mortal stumbled back and obeyed, ushering the last of their men behind him to a hasty retreat.

The soldiers cleared the main halls, escaping to all sides until only Halbrand remained. Galadriel wanted to scream but she had no mouth. Halbrand was right, he had the ring, and what Elendil did not know, of course, was that indeed only Halbrand stood a chance against the Balrog – because they were both Maiar.

In an instant, Galadriel regretted like never before all of the exploits her and him had engaged in, thought of the cloud and what must have already been taken from it – and hoped beyond hope that Halbrand could defeat the monster that now barreled from the pits with all the strength he had managed to hold onto so far.

Finally, the Balrog, in its whole terrifying stature appeared. It was a giant, ugly thing with bones made of ashes and flames, of sharp rock with horns and fangs and hellfire where its eyes should have been. It was an abomination made for just one purpose: to put fear into all that beheld it. And to destroy whatever got into its path.

The Balrog sneered and screeched, crawling up the side of the stones, coming into full, perfect view on the other side of that bridge. Halbrand’s meagre human form was no match for its size alone. The Balrog could have crushed that body with a single blow. But Halbrand was no human. Halbrand was Sauron – and Sauron was still mighty.

And he attacked first. If possible, the Balrog seemed surprised, and it took the creature a moment before it understood what formidable foe it had come face to face with. If it could have spoken, maybe it would have voiced the recognition, because Galadriel felt like the monster knew who it is coming up against. That it was the former right hand to its old master, Morgoth.

Halbrand himself took a deep breath – and then their battle began in earnest. The Balrog used its size first, starting forward across the bridge to bring its giant fist, clutching a fiery whip, out to swat Halbrand away like a fly. But he was faster, jumping with inhuman dexterity out of its reach, then lifted his hand with the ring mid-jump and broke chunks of rock out of the nearest terrace wall to fling them at the beast, catching it straight in its fiery, disgusting visage.

Halbrand landed on his feet in a crouch as the monster screamed out in rage, gnashing its unholy, sharp teeth that were as pointy as its twisted horns. Now it was angry. But Sauron was angrier.

***

Elsewhere, Galadriel saw Elrond at last arrive with her body in the centre of Ost-in Edhil and be quickly ushered into the palace. He was carrying her like a bride, or a ragdoll. Many voices were speaking all at the same time and it took her concentration away from what was happening in the mines.

One of Gil-galad’s High Council members, along with Mithrandir, intercepted Elrond and told him to make straight to the forge where Gil-galad awaited him. This made sense, Galadriel thought, the High King would be hovering over Celibrimbor’s shoulder day and night until that crown was finally completed. She would have to return to her body soon, but she was reluctant, very much so. And who could blame her?

***

She returned her focus back to Khazad-Dûm and it took a while before she found Halbrand again. The Balrog had run him up to the higher levels of the city, now completely deserted – and wherever the beast struck, destruction rained and fires caught. Halbrand was bound by the size of his body, but his powers were greater than that of the monster. He used the debris that had begun to come down around him as well as the growing fires all over against the Balrog, fighting it with its own means, and the beast became visibly more infuriated and more erratic by the moment.

It roared terribly and Halbrand shouted back, his voice louder than should be possible, distorted and equally as horrible. His eyes turned golden, his irises into obsidian slits. Dark veins cast his face into unnatural shadows as he was drawing from the same darkness that fed his adversary.

***

In the forge in Eregion, Elrond placed Galadriel’s lifeless body carefully on Celebrimbor’s workstation as the High Council Member ushered all of the smiths out of the tower, so only Elron and Mithrandir remained. Gil-galad was standing on the balcony, one hand on Celebrimbor’s shoulder, talking to him in hushed and urgent tones. The king waved the council member off, when he alerted him to Elrond’s arrival.

The High King’s face looked ashen and grey, even in the bright dawning daylight, but his eyes were red and blown out, madness dancing behind them. He did not appear the least bit surprised or even particularly pleased that Elrond had apparently managed to kill Galadriel, the strongest elven warrior in Middle Earth, and Elrond’s best friend to boot. It was all just a given to Gil-galad. He had already grown accustomed to being obeyed in every way. He would dominate it all, and no one would stand against him and his power.

***

Such must the Balrog have thought across the land in the Misty Mountains, and his fervour drew Galadriel’s attention back to the mines. The creature intensified its efforts to get ahold of Halbrand and crush him in its flaming fist. To Galdriel’s horror, Halbrand now seemed winded. She thought frantically of what would happen if he fell after all – if Sauron’s spirit would detach from his body and seek a new hos,t or if it would perish and return to Aman and what that would mean for the trial. Would it end thusly? Would she have done enough to redeem him? Would he wake up in reality and be changed sufficiently for a new solution on what to do with him?

Maybe it would be for the best, Galadriel wondered, but at the same time there was something stubborn inside her that yelled: I’m not ready to give him up yet, I am not done! I still need to… I still want to…

So many things. She still wanted so many things from him. He had a way to go still in terms of repentance for his actions, but also she, selfishly, was completely uninterested in returning to a world where she could not have those things she still needed of him. Because on the other side of this he would be Sauron and not King Halbrand of the Southlands who had been doing so much good the past five years. King Halbrand, who had not yet committed all the atrocities Sauron had in reality. King Halbrand, whom she had promised to return to. King Halbrand, who had asked her to be his Queen...

To her horror, Galadriel could see any sliver of a chance for all of this, dissipate as Halbrand took a wrong step, toppled forward and in saving himself from a deathly drop into the pit, left his flank unguarded. The Balrog saw the opening as clearly as Galadriel did, and she could feel her spirit burn with agony, anticipating Halbrand’s bloody end – but then something broke the Balrog’s deathly focus as well.

A lance flew out of nowhere through the smoky, billowing air, hit hard and wedged between the shoulder plates of the monster and it whipped around to growl at the assailant.

“BURN, YOU FOUL BEAST!” Elendil bellowed from the other side of the abyss, standing in the colonnade of a mighty palais perched on the rock’s edge, and drew his sword.

Now at the Balrog’s back, Halbrand got back onto his feet and Galadriel was glad Elendil’s view of him was obscured by the terrible monster, because Sauron emerged from the bounds of Halbrand, a giant shadow forming behind him, attached to him, a spiky crown on that pitch black silhouette which was not really on his head.

Sauron cried out, a filthy curse in Black Speech, condemning the Balrog to die, and then he lashed out, pushing forth from his very being such a burst of energy that the entire mine shook, every structure creaked and shivered under the might of it and finally, finally, the Balrog was caught unawares – the devestating blow cutting a clean line through his middle.

The creature hovered in suspension for a second, it’s terrible screams subsiding, and then it fell, as if in slow motion. Halbrand returned to his form, but Elendil had seen!

Galadriel could read on his face the moment the exiled Númenorian understood that Halbrand was not all that he seemed, but also witnessed the next in wonder, when Elendil decided he did not care and would not question it. Because he smiled over at Halbrand, who then did the same. Galadriel wanted to sigh with relief and wished that she could have – but within the next blink, everything changed. Halbrand’s face changed, too – from mild, cautious triumph to instant horror.

Because the Balrog as it descended – defeated, perished – was not yet relinquished in its danger. For as it plunged down, its two distinguished parts crashed against the side of the far rock and Halbrand screamed in warning as the palais’ foundations crumbled. Elendil looked around, panicked and startled, and then his face contorted into a silent grimace as the ground beneath him gave way.

“ELENDIL!” Halbrand cried out, his arms outstretched, but he could not do anything, could not undo the damage done.

The King of Gondor fell and fell, and then got hit by a piece of stone from overhead, falling faster than him. Halbrand screamed and Galadriel looked on helpless and in terrified despair, not even able to make herself known – and then before she could do anything else, her attention was gripped away harshly, to the other side of the mountains.

***

All the way over in Ost-in Ethil, Gil-galad finally returned from his talk with Celebrimbor on the balcony and made his way over to Galadriel’s presumed dead body, his billowing cape flowing behind him in a light morning breeze.

Still rattled from what she had just witnessed but with no hope to process it, Galadriel had barely a moment to gather herself again before her soul would firmly return to her body and she would have to jump right into action.

She hung formless on the ceiling of the forge and tried to remember her plan frantically, retracing the steps she knew would follow.

One: Gil-galad would feel for her pulse and confirm her death. Two: Inevitably, he would then move on to her hand to take the ring off of her – and Three: As soon as he would touch her thusly, she would move, catch him out and pin him down, grab the dagger she had brought from Osgiliath from its concealment on her thigh, and cut the ring clean off of Gil-galad’s finger.

What came after that… she would play it by ear, but with Mithrandir and Elrond there, it was going to be fine. It had to be. In any case, she could not think any further than the next couple of moments, because it was time.

Below her, she saw Gil-galad cross the room to her body, feel for a pulse which would not be there and turn to Elrond with an unhinged sort of delight as he indeed found none. And then Gil-galad moved on, like clockwork, running his long fingers down her cold arm to grab her hand. Mithrandir, off to the side, whispered a single word in Sindarin: “Adertha.” Reunite.

Then Galadriel’s spirit crushed back into her body. And she opened her eyes.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: GALADRIEL'S CHOICE

Gil-galad became aware of Galadriel’s true intentions – as well as the fact that she was indeed not dead – slightly ahead of her movement, yet not soon enough to stop her. She managed to startle him still and topple him over, using so much force that she threw them both off Celibrimbor’s workstation who came running into the forge from the balcony with a panicked look. Galadriel was too occupied to see Elrond try and stop the smith from getting away and alert the guards, and too occupied too, to see Mithrandir whisper something to a stray moth that had landed on his shoulder, because she was busy trying to cut off Gil-galad’s finger.

The High King’s strength was something to be reckoned with, something preternatural. But as he grabbed her harshly and pushed her beneath him, she managed to get her dagger from its hiding place. 

All of this happened so fast that neither Elrond nor Mithrandir could help - and before Galadriel even knew herself how she did it, she used Gil-galads poise to strike her hard across the face to cut off, not just his finger, but his entire hand. A splatter of blood, an unnaturally dark shade of crimson, landed on Galadriel’s neck and cheek and Gil-galad cried out in agony and fury. 

He did not try and get his revenge though, he was entirely focused on the ring no longer connected to him. This was when Elrond finally jumped into action and grabbed the severed limb. It was also the same moment that the doors to the forge burst open and the High Council barged in. Galadriel wondered if the loss of the ring had broken the compulsion over the soldiers and guards below – but realised it made no great difference because the High Council had been won over by greed and the idea of supremacy, rather than the ring’s corruption or force.

She tried to get back onto her feet but found that she was a little bit dizzy. One from her struggle with Gil-galad, who too was getting back onto his feet, and two, from being removed from her body for a time, and so as fast as it all happened, she could not flee in time. 

She could not catch up with Mithrandir and Elrond who had moved to get the balcony at their back and now where on it, Gil-galad’s dead hand in their grasp. She could only witness as two great eagles appeared outside of the tower, flapping their wings and hovering just so Mithrandir and Elrond would be able to be caught and carried off by them. To safety.

She could not reach them, because between them, the High Council members appeared and started to make a grab for her and attack the eagles.

“GO!” She shouted to Elrond and Mithrandir who appeared to have decided to fight. 

It was too risky. They had the ring, they needed to flee with it.

“Galadriel!” Cried Elrond in protest.

“No! Go!” She ordered. “Come back for me!”

She nodded to him one last time, seeing just another glimpse of Elrond’s eyes as two High Council members pushed into her sight line. She hoped so much he would listen. And then everything went dark.

***

Much like sleep, unconsciousness was not felt by Galadriel, though coming back from it was more disorienting than waking up in a bed. With her face on a hard, cold, dirty and foul-smelling floor, she remembered glimpses of sound before she could even open her eyes. Something about Lindon, something about dungeons. Something about treason. And then Gil-galad, who screamed bloody murder and demanded for Celibrimbor to come with him and finish the crown.

This told her most of what she needed to know. The image she saw when she finally did open her eyes – though it pained her because her head felt like someone was banging against her skull from the inside – told her the rest. 

This was indeed Lindon and it was indeed a dungeon. She was completely alone in the dark, for there was no need for guards. These cells had withheld millennia, some said they were made in Aman by Aule himself and brought to Middle Earth to hold Morgoth when he would be captured. Now they held Galadriel.

She pressed herself up onto her elbows and then hands, straightening her back to assess the damage as well as the sparse light allowed. Her headache was still blinding but she tried to see as much as she could. Her dress and skin were stained with mud and that unworldly crimson blood that had dried to near black. She had some bruises she more felt than saw and around her wrists were chafed, red lines, sensitive to the touch. They must have dragged her out of Eregion and then taken her bound and gagged to Lindon to throw her into the dungeons beneath the Gray Havens without a single pause. 

She did not know how long ago this had been though, how much time she had lost. All she knew was that she was parched and her stomach growled. And most of her body hurt. She would need sustenance and looked around her cell for some aid. A human would have been totally blind in the darkness, but Galadriel, with her elven eyes, could see green-and-blue shimmers and silhouettes, and there, at the far end of her prison, a crystal reflection. A puddle! 

She scrambled over to it, crawling because she did not trust her legs to carry her, and did not hesitate to drink from the puddle. The water was stale and disgusting, its taste much like the foul stench in the air but it was better than nothing. Still, Galadriel had to fight down a gag and forced down the bile by drinking more of the liquid until her tongue was numb to the taste. When she absolutely could not stomach anymore, she inched away from the water again and scooted across the floor until her back hit the dungeon wall, cold and unyielding. 

She wanted to cry but she knew she had no time for that. She needed to reach out to her allies and find out what steps she had to take to get out of her jail. Urging herself to focus past her throbbing head, she tried to reach out with her mind, to Mithrandir, Elrond, anyone – but to her deep chagrin, if not surprise – she found out that her cell did not only hold her body, but it also held her mind. Even with her Valar strength, she could not get past it – and this concerned her greatly. She was all alone, with no way at all to reach out and make herself known.

It made no sense that she should not be able to use all of her powers, that this cage would contain her when without her, the cage would not even exist! The only way any of this would be possible, was if the Valar themselves had decided to take her off the board for a time – and really, that must have been it. 

The Gods are always watching, she thought and it took her an embarrassingly long moment to have the good sense to feel ashamed. Because if they were always watching, now it seemed ridiculous to have not assumed this from the very get-go – and she could not believe this only now occurred to her – they had seen everything.  

They had seen her with Halbrand, with Sauron, had heard every whispered word, had witnessed every tender caress, every scandalous, tantalising touch. They probably even knew how in this very second, she missed him like a hole in her side.

She wanted to see him, wanted to know if he was safe. He would have to be, she figured, otherwise the trial would be over. But she could not understand why the Valar would want her on the sidelines now, when there was such peril for Halbrand to be faced. And worst of all under what circumstances. Because assuming he was alive and well, he must have reunited with Elrond and Mithrandir at this point. News of Elendil’s death must have reached his heirs. The destruction of the mines by the Balrog must have devastated the dwarves. But mostly, he must know that Galadriel herself had been taken. Maybe he even thought she was already dead.

This could ruin the whole thing. He had said it himself, if he lost her, he would not know what he would do. Galadriel was rather certain that at no point in this third trial Sauron had ever been this dangerous, this close to emerging fully and destroying all her efforts. Maybe that was exactly the point. Maybe this was not one of her tests – but one of the Valar’s themselves. Maybe they wanted to see how he would fare without her, maybe the battle of the Misty Mountains had given them the idea.

But she was furious that she was being kept out of it all. That she could not see him, not even observe. Not even let him know that she was alive. These were her trials! She was the one judging him, she should be the one to observe!

She deliberated for all of a second if she should call out to the Valar out loud and demand she get her dominion over her world back but then decided against it. It must all have a reason. Still, this did not lessen her worrying about the outcome of her absence. She was not sure how Halbrand would act. And worst of all, she missed him. It was an absurd sort of feeling but after five years being around him constantly, revolving around watching his every move, now being without him felt like a part of her had been cut out of her side.

Dwelling on it was of little use though, and it already exhausted her, so she settled in against the stones at her back and tried to sleep. She could not. There was a leak somewhere, a steady drip-drip-drip of water falling into a hollowed out rock that drove her half crazy and she could not drown out the sound.

Her powers were null and void in this damned dungeon and so she could not simply will herself out of consciousness. She sat there in the darkness pondering and decided she had not felt this powerless in centuries. She did not like it, not one bit.

***

After an indeterminable time of that, she came face to face with someone who very much did. She heard him before she saw him, because every sound in the darkness rang out like an explosion. She had no desire to speak to him, and half feared he was coming to kill her, but at least his arrival drowned out the excruciating dripping across the dungeon which she had previously sought to dampen by pacing in circles through her cell.

The High King Gil-galad appeared, a bandaged stump where his right hand should have been. He was alone though she assumed there were guards nearby and when she listened for them, she could hear the heartbeats. Gil-galad’s cloak rustled as he moved, his eyes as dark as the shadows surrounding them. He had not bothered bringing a torch, they could see each other well enough. 

She could see how little he resembled the man she had once known, saw the black veins around his eyes, giving him the appearance of a mask. She also saw the reason for them, for on his head glistened a silver crown, shimmering iridescently in the bluish hues. She considered this in all its consequences. 

Celibrimbor had finished his dark task, now Gil-galad would be mightier than ever before, possibly as mighty as Sauron, and if the Valar would not return their strength to her, more mighty too, than her. She eyed him cautiously, looking to see if he was going to strike a silent attack and rid himself of her – but she felt no cold sting creep up her back and make its way to her heart, she just felt his piercing gaze on her.

He observed her in turn, waited for her to open her mouth but she did not do him the favour. Even as he attempted to wait her out, she stubbornly kept silent, just scowling back at him. Finally, he sighed as if he had grown bored of a game.

“Commander Galadriel, daughter of Finarfin,” he murmured and huffed out a mirthless laugh. “I should have bound you to that ship to Valinor.”

“You need to take off that crown,” Galadriel replied, ignoring the bait. She knew he would not listen, but she could at least try.

“Because you think I do not deserve it?” He taxed her, coming even closer to the iron bars of her cell. “You always believed you were better than me. It was obvious, insolent, in your every move, in every command you ignored, every misgiving look. But you have failed,” he sneered. “You joined the ranks of lesser beings and moved against your own kin – and now you are in chains for it.”

Galadriel knew exactly what he was trying to do, deriding her choices, but she did not entertain him. He wanted to paint her as a traitor. She knew better.

“You have lost yourself to the power of the mithril, do you not see it?” She tried again. “You have to free yourself from it. You can still come back.”

“Come back to what?” Gil-galad challenged, his eyes flickering dangerously. “To our fading kingdoms? Merely accepting the pathetic end to the rightful rulers of this Middle Earth? To be overshadowed by meagre humans and cave-dwelling dwarves? – Or the orcs you now associate with, sharing your bed and body with a low man who spared their miserable, cursed lives?”

She did not dignify the accusation of having lied with Halbrand, but she could not help setting one thing right: “You have no idea who Halbrand is.”

“And I do not care,” Gil-galad declared haughtily. “I hope you have said your farewells to him, for after your trial, you will not get the chance.”

“My trial?” Galadriel repeated evenly, not that she was truly surprised.

“For treason,” he replied. “High treason, in fact. Punishable by death.”

“Why not just kill me right here in the shadows?” She asked him, although she knew why he could not do that, however much he might wish to.

“With no one to witness what an indiscretion such as yours, against your own king and kin, costs?” He almost snickered. “I would be a fool. – Four days from now, you will be tried in front of the High Council. In five days you will be hanged from the neck at the harbour for your betrayal.”

She held her peace. As soon as she was out of this cell, he would know what he would get for his betrayal. Thus, she simply inclined her head to him in a mock curtsy and then returned to the shadows, watching him do the same. She charted the sounds of his footsteps fading, his heartbeat and the ones of his guards along with it, and then only kept from cursing by a hair as the emptiness was once more filled with that tortuous drip-drip-drip.

***

The incessant noise followed her deep into the night – or what she assumed must have been night if her sense of time still had any meaning at all. In the end she managed to drift off to the rhythm of it – but even if she could not tell the difference in the moment of sleep, she knew as she was awoken by a sharp whisper, that it had not been enough time to rest. 

It took a moment to adjust to the flickering light of the torch her visitor had brought, the red and gold startling to her eyes who were now so accustomed to the darkness. Eventually the shapes of the elf cleared to reveal an old face, painted with regret and fear; he kept looking over his shoulder.

“It is a fine work, that crown,” she told him icily, unwilling to extend him any kindness. “Maybe your best yet.”

“Lady Galadriel, forgive me,” Celibrimbor whispered, so quiet she thought he expected Gil-galad to walk in on them any second.

“What is your excuse? Did he force you? Or seduce you like he did the High Council?” She got up close to the bars on her cage, hissing at him like an animal in captivity. “You must see that this is madness!”

“He is the High King,” Celebrimbor replied, cringing under her scrutiny – but at least she could tell he was under no compulsion. She did not know if that made things better. “I followed the orders given to me.”

“Do you know how many dwarves died for the ore in that crown?” She spat back at him. What a pathetic excuse! “Do you know what that power does? Have you seen how it twisted him, even when it was just a smidge of it inside the ring? Do you know what this crown will make of him? Every day it will take more off him until there is nothing left but the will to power. To dominate every living thing.”

“That is not what I wanted,” Celebrimbor pleaded. “I only hoped to help save my kind.”

“And now you have helped deliver us to the brink of absolute corruption,” she told him bitterly. “He wishes to make tyrants of all of us.” 

“I am sorry.” He looked over his shoulder again, looking like a mouse afraid to breathe or move a single muscle. “I do not have much time, there are guards all over the palace. I cannot be detected,” he continued hurriedly. “What can I do? Whatever I can, I will.”

“If you mean it, reach out to Elrond. Tell him I am alive,” Galadriel said, although she much doubted if Celebrimbor would have the guts to – and unsure yet, if this was not all a ploy by Gil-galad to spy on her and learn if she had any plans of insurrection or revenge. “If you try to deceive him, he will know.

“I do not wish to deceive you,” Celebrimbor promised. “I hope to rectify what I helped ruin.” 

“Then do it,” Galadriel told him coldly. He had not yet earned any sympathy. He should have known better.

He nodded and everything in him looked ready to flee, but he paused for a moment. 

“Just one thing,” he began, “one can never be redeemed if there is no one who will forgive. Will you forgive me, when the time comes, and not forget that I was repentant?”

Galadriel found this peculiar, most of all because he seemed to sincerely believe that she would be in any position to grant him forgiveness. This would mean he believed that she would get out of the entire ordeal with her neck unbent. Or maybe he was trying to play for both sides to ensure his own survival. He had never struck her as an opportunist or a turncoat, but mortal danger had a way of unearthing such qualities. 

If anything, nodding and thus promising she would forgive him if she wound up in the position to, cost her nothing, so she did and he bent down into a bow longer and deeper than befit either of their station. Then he scurried away, leaving her again in darkness once over and wondered if he knew more than she did.

Maybe Gil-galad had gotten much worse since he had donned the crown, maybe now even his staunch supporters had grown weary. Maybe he was crumbling under the power – she had seen better men than him crawl under the weight of the one ring back in the day and turn hollow and stupid from desiring it so much. She thought of Gollum and how pitiful he had become – maybe, if the one crown was making such a pathetic creature of Gil-galad, the High Council would become wise to it and the tides were turning. 

Maybe Celibrimbor also remembered how expertly Halbrand had smithed and how silver-tongued he had been… maybe he suspected in him the true nature of the supposed low man – though she did not consider this very likely. 

In the hours and days to come, she would come up with a million different scenarios, pacing up and down her restricted quarters, her mind going frazzled with the considerations. The speculating on what she was missing above and the cursed drip-drip-drip of water. She was increasingly anxious and irritable, whispering to the Valar under her breath, missing Halbrand so much it split her head open, and wanting so badly to sleep but never being able to for more than a blink. 

***

When Celebrimbor finally returned to her, she felt forgiving and even adoring, just by merit of him being another living being she could communicate with. She could tell by the way he looked at her that she must have made a ghastly impression. She knew she was filthy, in every possible way. She did not care.

“I got through to Elrond,” he told her under his breath, still much in the nervous fashion that he had spoken to her last. “They will march on Lindon on the day of your trial. – They wished for me to tell you to be ready.”

“I will be,” she promised him. 

She did not plan to let Gil-galad survive as long anyway. Celebrimbor nodded and attempted to sneak away again but she stopped him, desperate for just a little bit more contact. Or at least a shred of information on what was happening above.

“Is Gil-galad worse?” She asked. “Has the High Council realised that he is mad?”

Cemebrimbor shook his head. “The High Council is just as rabid, the cavalry is under the bind of the crown. – But the citizens… the other elves, they are afraid. They do not agree with the king’s methods. It is not right, not just. – I must go. Forgive me.”

Then he left her alone to her racing thoughts once more. What he told her only made her long wait marginally better. At least she knew now that Halbrand had not revealed himself yet or done his own evil deeds to rival Gil-galad’s – though she did not wish to consider how he might feel about the completed crown. And so she made her decision. 

She would not kill Gil-galad by sheer power of will as soon as she would be released from her prison. She needed to be close to him physically, better yet if they were alone, so she could end him and make sure the crown was destroyed as well before it could fall into Halbrand’s hands. Maybe that would be cheating and maybe it would be a good test to see if he would make a grab for it, but she had spent too many hours alone in the dark to accept that this choice could be the end of it. 

She did not accept it – and if the Valar had decided to take her out of the equation for this long, humiliating and helpless a time, she would make that choice for Halbrand, for Sauron, and have him live to see another test. One of her design. This was her trial, after all.

***

Galadriel’s sense of self, space and time was brittle by the time the day of her trial finally came. She barely realised her being led in chains around her wrists and ankles, bathed and dressed in them, too, on the ground floor of the palace. She was given only a thin shift to wear, no doubt Gil-galad’s intention to further humble her but she supposed it could have been worse; he could have put her in front of the High Council and a sizable crowd of onlookers completely bare. Such as it was, she found herself standing in front of what was going to be the tribunal to decide her death with her modesty mostly intact.

Still, the elves looking up from her from below the hilltop chosen for the trial, looked pitying and horrified at what was unfolding. Nobody did a thing to stop it, of course, but she was too tired to fault them for it. Fear was the most powerful deterrent of sedition after all. 

At least, her powers had returned to her. She had tried them out as she was being put to right at the palace, which was now far out of reach – they had marched her into the forest on the foot of the mountain at the back of the Gray Havens, and maybe Gil-galad had decided to move up the timeline and hang her today on one of the branches of the tall trees surrounding them. But she was now rather certain that it was not going to come to this. 

She had reached out to Elrond and found him awaiting her contact and now they were linked, their minds as one as he kept her apprised of the position of their advancing forces. There was no time to gain a lot on what had happened in the meantime. She only understood that Anárion and Isildur were so blind with grief and rage over their father’s death that they had sworn bitter revenge on Gil-galad and deployed their whole army, which had given their alliance enough man-power to create two fronts. 

One was marching with Mithrandir, Elrond and Bronwyn at their helm on the gates of the city to divert Gil-galad’s men in turn, while the Gondorian heirs and the bulk of their troup would join Halbrand, the Southlanders and Durin with his battalion of warrior dwarves as they set out for the trial grounds. It was as good a strategy as any, to divide and conquer and Galadriel already knew her one and only target.

Gil-galad, as paranoid as he ought to have been, had already gotten arrogant with all his power. He deemed himself unbeatable, which she would make sure was going to be his downfall. 

If anything, while he was still declaring to his part eager, part horrified audience her crimes and failures, he was not aware that a few leagues away, Elrond and the Gondorians emerged from the treeline in formation in front of the city gates.

Word reached him soon enough, though. At the same time, he and his High Council became aware of the second host approaching the forest. As soon as they did, it was mayhem.

Three things happened at once; somewhere, still hidden behind the trees behind her, Galadriel heard the rallying cry of Halbrand, then Anárion, then hundreds of feet charging. Instantly, Gil-galad deployed his guard and the High Council to defend against the attackers as his forced public scurried – and then the High King caught Galadriel’s stare just as she blast out of her chains with a burst of energy she had been aching to use ever since leaving that damned dungeon. 

Then Gil-galad, commanding four guards to shield him, made for the woods. Galadriel followed. She ducked out of the way from flying arrows as behind her, men and dwarves came upon the elven soldiers. 

She did not turn around, her focus was on Gil-galad alone. Quickly, and without even having to draw from her Valar strength, she caught up with the slowest of the king’s guardsmen and quickly disarmed him, casting him aside with a clever blow of his own sword’s hilt and chased after them. She could tell the elves were being compelled in the same manner they had been before, they were slow with it, as if fighting the bond. 

Gil-galad must have known it too, because eventually, he broke away from them too much for them to feasibly be of aid. Galadriel ploughed through them by sheer aggression alone until she left them way behind her. Only Gil-galad was fast, unnaturally so. It was the mithril of course – and Galadriel by herself would probably have been no match for it, but she was not just herself. She drew from her borrowed powers and charted the path Gil-galad was taking. Then she cut through the woods, at a speed so fast it was as if she had appeared out of thin air on the clearing Gil-galad reached at the same time.

The high elf stopped short when he saw her and for a brief moment, he was startled, unable to fathom how she had managed to outrun him – but he quickly recovered and decided to face off with her instead of running. He must have remembered that he should find her weak. 

Arrogance blinded him, and malice, as he laughed in her face, his voice unnatural, guttural and dark, and he lifted both his arms to bring all the trees and their roots around him to life. Galadriel side-stepped where suddenly a thousand wooden arms broke from the ground and the woods, conducted by Gil-galad as if they were the tentacles of a horrid sea monster. 

She wished she would have had more time to appreciate her foes mounting frustration at how much faster she was than even his supernatural force and dexterity with his extra limbs, for he did not know that he was outmatched. As it was, she was just waiting for him to tire himself out.

He meant to chase her across the clearing and box her in but as he finally had her pinned in one spot – the branches creating a cage of sorts around her – Galadriel knew it was time to end it. 

She briefly considered if there could be a different way but then she decided against another solution, reminding herself that this was her trial, her reality and that this Gil-galad did not really exist. She needed her control back and so she took it. Oblivious to her machinations, Gil-galad laughed and she saw him approach her prison through the small slits in the winding boughs and then she struck. His laugh died in his throat.

In a blast, she cut through the wood, making it splinter apart. Gil-galad howled in surprise and threw up his hands, willing new arms to grab her but she pushed them all away. Then she took a single step forward, lifted her own arm and he froze mid-pace. This was it. She gathered all her strength, enough to break this very reality, and made of her open palm a fist.

At the same time, the crown on Gil-galad’s head folded together, as if crushed inside that fist and his head caved in under it with a disgusting crack. He had half a blink of an eye to look shocked before said eyes burst with the rest of his skull. Galadriel felt nothing but the force of her powers and within the next second, she did not have to bear the foul sight any longer. 

For much like she had done with the witches in Adar’s dark tower, she disintegrated Gil-galad on the spot and that cursed crown right along with it. Were this real, she would never have been able to do it – the crown must have been given to the fire much like the one ring had, but this was her reality and she now exerted full control over it.

It was done. There was nothing but sparks, flecks of matter, dust flitting about and the rest of the branches around her sunk back to the ground and back to the trees. All of them. All of them but one. 

“Huh,” Galadriel breathed, slowly returning to herself and found that from the corner of her eye, she could see that one branch was slow to retract.

A moment later she understood why. She looked down at herself at the exact time the last bough unlodged itself from her stomach, leaving behind a large red, quickly expanding hole in her middle. She touched her hands to it on instinct and drew them back just as red, puzzled at the sight. Blood. A lot of it. Too much of it.

Her knees gave way before she could remember that all of this was still in the grasp of her powers, the very fabric of the universe. Before her body even touched the ground, she felt herself unmoored again, like she had been when Mithrandir had cast her spirit out of her body. She was still confused, watching herself on the ground, bleeding out. 

Just as quickly, though, she was distracted from the sight by a pair of short legs and a voluminous pair of lungs. It was Durin who cried out her name, breaking from the tree line behind her.

And then, two paces after him came Halbrand, his head red, a gash just underneath his right eye.

“Where is she?” He yelled at Durin and overtook him. “WHERE IS SHE?”

It took him less than a second to see her, her white-red shift a stark contrast to the yellow leafs she had fallen onto.

“GALADRIEL!” Halbrand screamed at the top of his voice and charged towards her.

Galadriel herself floated above it all but still dimly felt as Halbrand cradled her body close, pressed his hand down onto her wound and tried to heal her. He did not even care that Durin was running towards them and would potentially see what he was attempting.

The dwarf king was too preoccupied however, for he yelled: “Anárion and Isildur – the elven council! They have run them up the mountain!”

Halbrand did not care, he was frantic, single-minded. 

“Do not dare die now, elf,” he hollered at her motionless form. “Do not dare leave me!”

The moment was endless. It was almost frozen. No, it was frozen, she thought, as below her all motions ceased, and even the wind stopped blowing. Galadriel understood with a clarity she had seldom felt in all her existence that this was a crossroads. She understood it, because she was made to. The valar did not speak to her but she understood them nonetheless. She had a choice here. Did she wish to die? Exit the trial and observe how Sauron would fare without her? Or did she decide to stick around and keep being a part of his trial? There was no pushing her in any direction and she felt strangely unjudged. 

She had no idea if she truly would be, no matter what she chose – but she felt free to choose either way. Maybe the Valar had deemed this the better course after locking her out of her own world for nearly a week – or maybe they were just curious.  

She did not care. She remembered her mission. Maybe her dying would be that last great test for Sauron she had mused it might be earlier in her dark dungeon. Maybe this was her call to let it happen. But even if the Valar believed he might pass it yet, she knew better. 

Because he loved her. Sauron loved her and she was rather certain he loved her more than he had ever hated anything else – and he would burn the entire world down if he lost her now. Maybe it was all unfair, that now she saw it so clearly, how much he needed her light to hold on to his own. Maybe she should not have to save him. Maybe it was not really redemption if he could not bind himself to it on his own. At this point, she did not care. 

She remembered Celebrimbor’s words in a flash: To be redeemed one needs to be forgiven.  

This, no matter how much she loved him, she had not done yet. She had not forgiven him. And it was something she possibly only ever could do with this version of Sauron. She did not know if she could ever forgive the creature who lay on that stone altar beneath the Halls of Mandos in Aman, but she could forgive King Halbrand. She could give him what he had begged her for so many times over. She could give him her light and bind it to him, bind herself to him, too – and mitigate his power. Yes, it was unfair. She should not have to save him; she wanted to and now she knew that she could. And that made all the difference.

That endless moment finally ended and it did so with Galadriel pulling one last time from the Valar’s strength, knowing somehow that she would not be able to do so quite as easily again. She used it to put herself back into her body, the wound in her middle healing both from Halbrand’s touch and her own powers and she gasped before she opened her eyes. When she finally did, she still saw nothing. She was buried in Halbrand’s neck and hair.

He smelled like sweat and blood and musk and she had never been happier for the stench of battle on anyone. He was barely aware that she was back yet and he drew in a sharp breath when she finally grabbed a hold of him. When he realised that she lived, his whole body shook with how forcefully he tried to hold back a sob and he quickly but carefully lowered her down and frantically pushed her hair out of her face. His hands were shaking.

“Galadriel,” he mumbled and she willed her eyes to focus on his face, seeing his in turn welling with unshed tears. “I thought I lost you. – Never do that again!”

Galadriel could not do much other than nod her head, she was not fully back in the present and Halbrand did not seem like he would actually hear her either. He looked down at her dumbfounded, like she was made of light.

Behind him, Durin finally reached them, none the wiser about all that had just transpired.

“Commander Galadriel,” he said. “Are you alright?”

“I am,” Galadriel muttered, not looking away from Halbrand who still clasped her cheek with his large hand.

“Glad to hear it,” Durin nodded and then tapped Halbrand on the shoulder a little awkwardly. “But, er, the Heirs of Gondor. We should hurry before they join their father under the soil.”

***

Galadriel insisted on joining the effort, even if Halbrand was firmly against it – but she would not hear it and followed them through the forest, headed to the rocky cliffs beyond them, until Halbrand gave up on trying to send her back. 

To her infinite sadness, as they reached the foot of the mountain, they had to accept that they were too late for one of them. For there lay Anárion, his bones shattered, his legs and arm sticking out from under him at strange angles, though his face was unharmed, his eyes closed like he was sleeping.

“Oh no,” she heard herself whisper and felt Halbrand hover close behind her. “He was just a child.”

“They are all children,” Halbrand murmured back, and sounded incredibly tired. “All of mankind.”

“Up ahead!” Cried Durin then and they all looked up the rock.

With her good eyes, Galadriel could make out Isildur with his sword raised, fighting off what must have been at least two remaining High Council members and she and Halbrand wasted no time starting ahead, leaving Durin in the dust as they raced each other up the cliff-side.

They arrived just in time to see Isildur getting pushed off the side off the precipice. Galadriel screamed and charged at one of the elves and did not give herself time to think before she drove her stolen sword right through his heart and she did not turn to look at Halbrand kill the other one. All that mattered was to see if Isil could be saved. 

Halbrand was quicker, leaping for the edge of the mountain as his assailant was still in mid-topple to the ground. Galadriel hurried to join him and saw at the same time that he did, that Isildur was hanging on to the cliff by a threat. 

She knew before she saw it the temptation that would flicker across Halbrand’s face – she doubted he was even fully aware of it himself but she saw it. Saw it so clearly as if she could hear it spelled out in his thoughts: If he let Isildur fall now, if he simply did nothing, he would become the default king of men. He probably would not even have to marry Eärien, although it would make sense. But by simple merit of his sex, he would be the next in line for the Gondorian throne. He would double the size of his kingdom in one fell swoop through no fault or scheming of his own. 

It was power on a silver platter, ripe for the taking.

But then the flicker passed, as quickly as it had come on and Halbrand lunged forward, caught himself by the arm on a boulder and got to Isil just in time to heave him back to safety.

“Anárion!” The young man cried when he barely had air back in his lungs. “He is– they ki…” His voice died, upended by a violent sob and Halbrand held him close as the new King of Gondor cried in his arms like a babe.

Galadriel staggered back as it slowly sunk in… it was over. The trial was not – but the shadow had passed. They had cast it out.

Until the next one comes to take over the mantle, Halbrand’s voice reverberated in her memory but she shook it off. That was a worry for another day. Now, she would rest.

***

Night did not fall on Lindon quickly, which seemed bizarre considering what had happened. But in retrospect, it had all been so fast, that the inhabitants of the Grey Havens barely had time to fully process the change. As soon as Gil-galad had died and the crown had been destroyed, the soldiers returned to their true selves, and aside from a few members of the High Council who had stolen themselves away from the battlefield, no one dared go against Elrond’s and Mithrandir’s intervention.

It was decided on that afternoon by a newly formed council, that Elrond was to take on governing Lindon for the time being, until someone of higher birth could be instated and when finally night fell, Galadriel stood on the balcony of what had once been her own quarters, and looked down at a peaceful city below. One would never have guessed that there had been bloodshed just hours earlier. One would never guess that hosts of humans and dwarves lingered in the city, celebrating their victory, the elves giving them a wide berth.

There would have to be peace made in the morning, proper peace, so that trust could begin to grow again among the species, but that was a matter for the following day. Coming up with something to tell everyone about what happened to the crown was another one of those. But now, Galadriel just wanted one night of peace. And to see Halbrand, but she knew he would be with her within the hour. He had only gone to check on Isildur first. 

“How is the patient?” She asked when Halbrand, just some ten minutes later, let himself into her chambers. 

He looked better than when she had seen him last, cleaned up, in fresh garb. Much like herself, he was wearing nothing frivolous or grand; a white shirt and breeches. Galadriel had had what remained of her wound dressed in gauze and now wore the softest, palest blue silk dress she had unearthed from her old dresser above it. 

Neither of them had need to dress any part of the victor of a fight. If at all, this was for the next day. And really, it made no matter. What mattered was that they could fix what had been broken in the last couple of weeks. Even if some things would stay broken forever.

“Isildur will recover,” Halbrand replied pensively. “The deepest wounds are of his soul, though.” 

“You saved him,” she stated evenly, stepping back towards the inside, yet lingering on the threshold. “You could have easily made a grip for all of Gondor, married Eärien and been the one king of all men. Why didn’t you?”

It was more a sincere question than a veiled accusation, though she did not blame him for squaring his jaw. They had been here often enough. His cheek puffed as he did so, threatening the stitches on the cut underneath his eye, but the twine held firm. 

“For the same reason I gave Gondor away in the first place,” Halbrand said and she could tell he tried to match her non-confrontational manner. “I want to save Middle Earth.”

“You also wanted to rule it,” she reminded him, harkening back to their conversation, a lifetime ago on that his illusion of their raft.

“I do not have to rule it in name to ensure order and stability,” he confessed to her easily enough.

“You can rule by-proxy,” she stated, for it was neither a question, nor an accusation, just the truth. “Through Isildur. Maybe even through Elrond, at least for the time being? And maybe through me, too?”

“Is it really ruling, when the rulers make their own decisions?” Halbrand asked, walking towards her.

“The exact ones you want them to make?” She walked a few paces too, now a little bit peeved at his evasiveness – by now he should really have known to be not so obtuse with her.

“Did it hurt so far?” He went right on, trying to call her out on what he must perceive as a flawed argument, but then obviously decided against further antagonising her, bidding instead: “Let us not fight. I just got you back.”

“I am merely trying to understand you,” she told him sincerely, unsure yet if she should make him aware of the fact that she had forgiven him, if only this version of him. “It seems that is all I ever do. – Your methods, your masterplan. That ultimate draw to absolute dominion… If, maybe I can never make you good but can only hope to keep you neutral. I wonder if you can help grasping for power at all, in any which way, or if it’s in your nature.”

Halbrand sighed deeply, shook his head a little bit, but then seemed to make some sort of resolve. For he breathed out a huff again and then crossed the room to her, his face blazing. 

“Galadriel, after so many years…,” he murmured, now close enough to touch her, and he did, caressing her cheek so lightly as if it was a butterfly brushing against her skin – it made her heart flutter to life just like such a creature. “Let me show you what is in my nature. Let me show you what draws me more than power.” Then ever so slowly, he leaned forward until his lips connected with her ear. “Please.” It was little more than a breath.

It was Galadriel who took the last step. She grabbed his face hard and kissed him, once, twice, thrice, and then let him go, so she could look at him. He was breathless. He was smiling.

“Yes,” she finally whispered, choosing to forget everything in the whole universe that should keep her from making this decision. She did not care, it did not signify, not anymore. “Bind yourself to me.”

He did not need to be told a second time.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER NINETEEN: ELROND’S BLESSING

Halbrand wasted not a second to kiss her again, enveloping her in his arms and grabbing her tight as he covered her lips with his. A startled heartbeat later, she lost the ground beneath her feet when he picked her up. She winced a little, which was when they both remembered that she still had a large wound in the middle of her stomach.

“Forgive me,” Halbrand muttered, putting her back down gently and then for a breathless moment she looked at him, her whole being lodged in her throat.

“I have,” she whispered and he tilted his head.

He did not fathom what she meant by it, but more so in a way that suggested he could not believe there to be a bigger meaning behind her words, so he just nodded and took her hand.

He led her carefully, almost reverently to her bed and Galadriel felt a flash of heat course through her. This was likely a terrible idea and so many things should keep her from continuing on this path, but she shoved all of those considerations into the back of her mind and buried them deep inside herself. She felt like she was burning up and she welcomed it. She wanted to burn. And maybe it was selfish but she was beyond caring. 

There was no going back now.

She fought herself out of her own head, focusing only on the matters at hand – Halbrand’s fingers ghosting along the small of her back as he softly nudged her forward. His eyes on hers, green in the candle-lit room, as he sat down on the bed and tugged her to him, so she ended up straddling his lap. 

Funny, she thought, she had never realised it so fully, had not let herself contemplate it with quite so much wonder before – his eyes changed colour depending on the surrounding lights. He kept them locked on hers as she settled in over him and he shifted, opened his legs so she had more purchase, and could feel him harden where their bodies met.

She sighed and brought up both her hands to his face, caressing his cheeks and temples, to then wind her fingers into his soft curls. He hummed when she did it, throwing his head into his neck to follow the movement and closed his eyes briefly, savouring her touch. He looked completely at peace, content, indulging in it all. As if he had trouble keeping himself solid. Galadriel herself felt like she was turning liquid, but he held her firmly, his large hands spanning across her back, mindful not to touch her wound.

“We have to be careful with each other,” Halbrand murmured as he opened his eyes again and tipped his head forward so he could place a long, wet kiss on her neck, making her see stars and rake her nails across his scalp.  

He hummed, grazing her skin with his teeth, upward to her ear where he whispered: “Turn around.”

Galadriel had no qualms following his commands. She was curious and a little bit anxious, feeling like an inexperienced youth for some reason. She had never been quite this nervous, quite this expectant in the face of intimacy. He would be the second person she lay with but somehow it felt like the first time. She trembled with nerves when she got up, turned around and sat down on his lap. 

Halbrand’s hands had never left her body and he made quick work of bunching her dress up, scratching her pale thighs lightly as he did. She leaned against his chest, letting her head fall onto his shoulder in anticipation. The pit of her stomach was a tight coil, even more so, when Halbrand dragged his palms back to her torso, put one over the bandage and the other one on her hip bone.

“Breathe,” he murmured and then she felt a great warmth spread in her belly as he poured more of his powers into her, right over her wound and made the pain fade until there was nothing left but the stirring of lust.

To her chagrin, Halbrand did not satisfy that stirring immediately, though. Instead he just held her there, breathing deeply so her back moved in time with his rib cage.

“Touch me,” she whispered and put her hand over his to move it between her legs where she needed him. 

He chuckled. “So eager.” But without further pause, he carefully used two fingers to wedge between her lips. “So ready.” She gasped as he dragged those fingers over her centre, drenching them in her wetness. Then he paused, which made her squirm and him rasp another laugh. “Do you want more?”

“Yes,” Galadriel sighed.

“Yes, what?” Halbrand’s words were hot, hitting the side of her face.

“Please,” she begged without a hint of pride. “Please go on.”

He did. It was feverish and lavishing, stroking her sensitive flesh like he was on a mission and Galadriel was instantly twitching, canting her hips forward to give him better access. She moaned and he shivered, flicking his fingers softly against her.

“I wanted to do this for so long,” he huffed and she felt this evident in his pent up energy. 

It radiated off of him like a blast of daylight.

Every caress he had only watched her give herself before, he now took on with a fervour that matched his very strive to power. As if nothing else mattered. She lost herself to his hands for a while, existing only to feel the sensations he was coaxing out of her and if it hadn’t been for the way he pulled her close to his body, holding her fast, she would have melted away. 

It was astounding how quickly he wound her up, how soon she felt herself climb to release – but she did not want to come undone under his hands. Not when tonight, she could finally have him fully. So, although it pained her, she eventually told him to stop and he let go instantly and even steadied her when she stumbled back onto her feet and tugged at him softly so he would follow.

He rose to his full height and straightened so she had to look up at him. She craved the connection and judging from his heated gaze, she thought he did, too. There was a soft breeze rustling through his curls lightly and Halbrand smiled in an amused sort of way, like he couldn’t believe she was real. He caught a strand of her hair and put it behind her ear, tilting his head. She could not say why, but the way he looked at her made her feel more beautiful than any reverent word or over-enthusiastic compliment from anybody else ever had before. 

The emotion propelled her forward and she only suffered not getting to look at him for the moment it took to pull his shirt over his head. As soon as the garment was discarded heedlessly to the floor, Galadriel gingerly touched her fingernails to his skin once more. His muscles tensed where she dragged her nails across his stomach and she loved watching his eyes glaze over as his breathing stuttered. 

There were worlds in his eyes, sonnets of poets and bards. So much love leapt out of them, it was hard to hold his gaze, mostly because she was sure she mirrored him entirely – and that was a kind of vulnerability that felt incredibly risky. It was almost irksome how safe she felt with him despite of all this, considering that he was easily the most dangerous being in Middle Earth. Though there was barely a hint of darkness about him at the moment. And this mere hint was in the possessive tint to his look. The way he stared at her as he undid his breeches and worked them down his legs. The way this look compelled her to keep still, waiting patiently until he was freed from restrictions and bare for her.

It was also in the speed with which he caught and grabbed her wrist as she attempted to make a hearty grab for his hard length, pointing skyward between them.

“No,” he rasped and pulled her hand up to his mouth to breathe on it, whispering: “This body is not used to… this sort of desire, of touch. I need to pace myself to be of any use to you. – I want to fall apart once I’m buried in you to the hilt, and not a moment sooner.”

Galadriel shivered at the promise of his words and accepted. He also did not give her a chance to fight him on it, because he got ahold of her dress again and took it off of her in one smooth, fell swoop. Then he unwrapped the gauze from her body – and her wound had completely disappeared. She could have commented on him wasting his magic on her thusly but she figured with what they were about to do, he was prepared to part with a lot more of himself – and he did not seem to hesitate to do so for a moment.

His gaze flitted across her naked form and he smiled before he kissed her again, holding her by the back of her head and grabbing at her hair. He gently nudged her towards her bed and together, still attached at their hungry mouths, they found their way onto the mattress. He laid her down carefully and she easily opened her legs for him. Glad for the guidance, she gave him her weight because she was so excited and aroused, it made her dizzy.

He only stopped kissing her then to keep an eye on her as he hovered above her and she hissed sharply when he used his hand to move his manhood against her flesh, once, twice, and then positioned himself so that they were aligned. He inclined his head to her one last time in an unspoken question and she nodded, taking hold of his arms on either side of her.

Then, without pomp or circumstance, he pushed into her. He took his sweet time, savouring every inch and she drew in a breath as she adjusted to the intrusion. Halbrand bit his lip so hard it went pale. And on a strangled moan, he finally sank all the way inside her. 

“Ow,” he groaned when she met that first thrust with her hips and she rejoiced in the way he fought for control, thinking that his body must be even more sensitive than her own, and she hardly knew what to do with herself already.

He paused, gathered himself and then finally bottomed out again, pulling out nearly completely before going back in hard and only when this made her moan in turn, seeing stars from the way he filled her, did he start to move in earnest. Panting, he stared down at her, steading himself with a hand clasped loosely around her shoulder and neck and Galadriel let herself enjoy the base carnal pleasure for a few lavish moments, enjoying thoroughly how he moved in her. If she could have stayed in this very moment forever, she would have.

He moved his groin with more urgent snaps soon, making her quiver with his force but still his eyes were soft and warm. There was nothing of the fury that had usually accompanied their physical closeness, nothing of the devastated desperation, now it was just joy and indulgence. Soon, every breath and every heartbeat moved them in unison. 

They were connected everywhere, not just their bodies. Galadriel understood, caught there underneath him with her chest and stomach tight with want, that this was just the physical consequence of a connection that they had had for millennia. He had always been there, at the corner of her mind, tugging and prodding, and she, in the privacy of her most debased thoughts, had always wanted him like this; fucking her like his existence depended on it. 

And he was not rabid, in fact it was the opposite. He drank from her like she was water, moved her along like he was a river and she was caught up in his current. It was natural and beautiful. It was sweeping her off to sea while he stayed the course, with a single minded purpose. Her pleasure seemed to be all that mattered to him. When she squirmed, he pressed her down, thrust harder, changed the angles, bent her to his shape, feeding off of her moans and laboured mewls like they were his only source of sustenance.

Halbrand himself was keeping under tight control… and once she had managed to see past the fog of her own need, she wanted to change this.

Which was why she grabbed him hard, scratching him with her fingernails to a tremoring growl and finally used her own strength to tip him over. She did not keep him outside of her for long, straddling him again and delighted in the different angle his rigid, pulsing cock hit inside her like this. He gulped as his torso snapped up as if on its own accord, so they wound up face to face. 

Galadriel moved her hips deliberately, wishing for him to be as close and as deep as possible, and he had problems keeping his eyes focused on her. Everything about it was magic, larger than life. Every touch fed the current between them and her body felt so unfathomably good and scandalously erotic, it was as if her insides drew together tighter and tighter. She wanted him so much, she could have cried.

Eventually, he cursed in Black Speech again, which gave her a full body shiver that he in turn used to throw his back down into the mattress and grab her by the thighs to hold her up as he fucked into her from below, his sounds growing more and more desperate and weak.

“I won’t be able to… ah… hold off much longer,” he whined, low and haltingly. 

He could hardly speak any longer and she echoed his broken moans with mewls and gasps of her own.

“Don’t,” she breathed and pushed his hips back down, picking up the pace.

Now, for the first time, he closed his eyes and his head fell into his neck. Her thighs were already bruising with how hard he gripped her and then moved them to grab her bottom and push and pull her against him for every deep stroke. He half-screamed and the sound made Galadriel come apart herself almost – but she held firm. He was close and she wanted to see him when he came, wanted to watch his face contort into that grimace of passion she had so wished to witness so many times before. She knew he would not need much more… but he had a request first. Something he wanted to ask of her before he would surrender himself to the fall.

“Can you… A'maelamin, ow,” he bit out and fought to open his eyes and look upon her once more. “My love… ah… say my name.”

Galadriel felt possessed for a moment by something dark and illicit that made her toes curl. 

“Sauron,” she whispered sharply and let herself get swept up in the shadowy, forbidden fantasy of being his terrible, unholy queen, of being sullied and ravenous and unleashed in her craving, taking from the pit of depravity that he could offer her and letting her blood run hot and black with power and might and force, lust and selfish abandon. 

She saw herself in a vision from another world, another time that had never come to pass, dressed in black on an obsidian throne, holding on to the stone for dear life as he rutted into her from behind like an animal, pulling her head back by her hair. He was devouring her as the shadow sang with their sinful corruption.

But even as he shuddered and met her thrusts harder and more intense yet, hitting that spot deep inside her that made her breath stall in her chest, he did not want that shadow. She felt it all around him, not just in the way he touched her but in the very air, the energy that flirred to life between them.

“My real name,” he begged shakily. “Please.”

They locked eyes and she slowed her movements down, understanding.

“Mairon,” she breathed and she had barely finished uttering it when he came on a delicate, pathetic and precious whimper.

Wondrously, she experienced his sensation much as if it were her own, so deep ran their connection. She felt his tremors as his cock pulsed, felt his heightened pleasure as her core welcomed his seed, clasping and clutching around him. And his face… his face was so deliciously torn and twisted. He was entirely undone, losing all control as he spent himself inside her, thrusting up desperately to her riding out his orgasm, delighting in his powerlessness.

It took him a moment to regain his bearings. But once he did, it was her turn to relinquish control. Faster than she could have anticipated, he had her on her back again and then even quicker after that, he had driven apart her legs, pushed down one of her thighs, wrapped his arm around it and then attached himself to her mouth and hand. He was relentless with her, feeling out her own sensations much like he had his, and gave her exactly what she wanted. 

When she needed his tongue flat and warm, building her up and up, he did it. Then, when she demanded his fingers, he added them. When she squirmed, needing at once less and somehow more, he reached up with his arms to her breasts and kneaded them while he flicked his tongue against her centre with great care. Through it all he stayed consistent and focused and she thought how his tongue had never truly been silver. It was golden.

And then, when at last she felt like she was going to explode, he went in for the kill. He put his thumb inside her and his palm on her pearl and then he gave her a little shock, a little wash of vibrating energy, that sent her flying. It was as if a tightly pulled band finally snapped, finally released her from her physical bounds. She was free, she was light, she was his.

Her scream must have pierced the night and she would later learn her fingernails dug into his neck drew blood as she scratched him and she came so hard and so ferociously, she forgot everything she had ever known.

Everything was far, far away. Middle Earth, the valar, the trial, even reality. All that was real was him. Was Mairon. And her. And the way he made her feel.

He let her unwind slowly and soon caught her soft moans coming down with his mouth and kissed her languidly, giving her a taste of herself.

“I love you,” he mumbled into the kiss and she could not form words yet – but he knew she loved him all the same.

Galadriel fought to open her eyes though, as they parted to breathe, for she needed him to see in her eyes what she could not tell him at the moment. She found them hazel again, darkened by the way his pupils had been blown out. He grinned, all sated elation, as if he had at last completed one big quest. She felt much the same way. 

She traced his nose with her index finger, his cheek, his brow bone, his strong jaw covered by that wonderful beard that had made her face puffy and red and tingly. And his lips, set in a smile, now that she reached them.

“Do you regret having given up so much of your cloud for me?” She asked him under her breath once she could finally speak again – knowing he would shake his head.

“I would give you almost everything,” he muttered. “Come here.”

Then he pulled her down onto his chest, covered them both with the soft sheet from the foot of the bed and held her in his arms for a long, long time. Galadriel had barely drifted off, when he spoke once more.

“Can you say it again?” He asked, murmuring like he was tired himself.

“Mairon,” she replied quietly, knowing exactly what he needed from her.

He hummed in response. “I like that,” he whispered. “Do you think I could be that to you, when we are alone?”

She nodded, because had she spoken, she would have cried for him. She understood with a start that this was his deepest, most vulnerable desire. He just wanted to be known and spoken to with love and affection. He had never been loved softly, and this at least, she could do for him.

She was glad when he kept talking, low and intimately in the safety of their secret union, for she would need another few moments to recuperate from this latest revelation.

“I was in your mind once,” he began, harkening back to a time when all of what they had just done seemed an utter impossibility. “And although you have locked it away from me since, I remember everything I saw. – I remember your childhood in Valinor. I remember every word your brother has ever said to you and the way your mother brushed your hair. I know how you came to Middle Earth hungry to carve out your own realm from the ground, how you wanted to rule… but I did not see your husband. You kept his memories locked away. Why? – Did you care too much or too little?”

“I do not know,” said Galadriel and for the first time since that day in the woods near Osgiliath, she even remembered Celeborn, although in her current state, she could not even find it within herself to feel guilty.

“I think I do,” Mairon mused. “I think you forgot about him.” She should have protested but how could she, when she had just thought the exact same thing? “I think we both forgot many things when we first met. Like what else we loved beside each other.” 

“Maybe I just did not want you to have any part of him,” she challenged but it had neither bite, nor conviction and Mairon continued on like he was keenly aware of this.

“No,” he drawled evenly. “No, I think this was supposed to happen. You and me.”

“Fated, you mean? Designed?”

He nodded lightly, she could feel his chin bop against the crown of her head. She twirled his chest hairs between her fingers.

“How?” She asked, considering his theory. “I’m an elf, you are Maiar. How could this be His doing?”

“I do not claim it is particularly obvious,” he said. “But would it not make sense for us to meet, for you to love me and me to love you and for us to unite like this. Light and dark. Power and control. And a bond that binds Middle Earth itself to this balance. To the balance we create?”

“So, now you believe we were meant to rule this realm together,” Galadriel asked, almost amused and crossed her arms on his chest, leaning on it to push herself up and look at him. “Do you not think this particular path would have been made a little more easily recognisable to us if it were so?” 

Mairon lifted an eyebrow. “We met in the middle of the Sundering Sea by complete happenstance! What were the odds?” 

Galadriel did not know if she wanted to laugh or to cry, because if one looked at it that way… But then she did not get to linger on the concept and all of its implications, because Mairon diverted her attention by caressing her cheek softly.

“Marry me,” he whispered and then grabbed her head, pulling at her hair, which made her shiver.

She kissed him and soon they were entwined with each other once over. 

When it was over and they held onto each other, with damp bodies and fluttering hearts, Mairon smirked at her as he wrapped her in his arms to press her close and hold her warm and tight.

“What?” She asked.

“You did not say no,” he declared, nuzzling his nose into the small of her neck. “When I asked you to marry me.”

She left him his triumph, although she did not answer him outright. 

In truth, she had made her decision on the matter when she had climbed into bed with him. This was the way of her people and more importantly the way she felt about him. She had given him her body and she would give him her life. It might be unwise, it was definitely madness, but it was done now. This was the path she chose, be that by design or her own making, it did not matter. Everything that mattered held her tight and stroked her back lightly as she relaxed into his arms.

***

Galadriel must have slept long because when she blinked awake, still in Mairon’s firm grip, she felt well rested and incredibly comfortable. Her bedfellow himself seemed completely content to just stay hidden in her hair, breathing her in and even held her back the first couple of times she wanted to leave the bed to set herself to right.

On her fourth attempt, he finally released her and leered at her without shame when she put her dress from the floor back over her head. Then she ran a comb through her hair perfunctorily and looked past the balcony over the city. 

She knew there was business to attend to, business that could not really wait, but she was incredibly loath to. If she could have, she would have stayed with Mairon in her old Lindon quarters until the very end of time.

She was in the middle of contemplating how long she could realistically shirk away any and all responsibilities of the day, when the choice was taken from her. Because from behind her door, there was a knock, and a visitor, who did not wait to be given the go-ahead.

Into the room barged Bronwyn, her eyes flitting from Galadriel at her window with her hair tousled and lips puffy, and Halbrand, naked in Galadriel’s bed, covered by nary a flimsy white sheet. The woman only lifted an eyebrow and then bowed to her king, although she never lowered her gaze.

“Your presence is requested by General Brodwick and the rest of the troup,” Bronwyn informed them and turned to Halbrand. “When I did not happen upon you in your quarters, I expected I would find you here.”

Then she fixed her eyes on Galadriel and both women knew that Bronwyn felt a vindication which was five years in the making. Galadriel inclined her head, sighed, and let Bronwyn have her moment to silently gloat. She had been right about her and Halbrand all this time, after all.

Bronwyn only turned away from the sight of her victory, when Halbrand started scooting out of the bed and the Southern woman kept her back to the scene until the King of the Southlands was dressed and presentable again – and he did not mind his deputy watching as he kissed Galadriel goodbye for the time being. 

Galadriel sighed when she was finally alone, her body still alight with the memories of the previous night, still shivering sinfully whenever she remembered what they had done in hot flashes. Bronwyn walking in on them did not majorly complicate things, but it inflicted a certain time pressure, so she wasted no time to change into more respectable garb for the day. She had to speak to Elrond.

***

To speak to Elrond in private, as had been her intent, was something Galadriel had to wait for. It was not until after they had addressed the High Elves of Lindon and had a council meeting of elves, men and dwarves, that she finally managed to be left alone with her best friend. 

The council had wisely decided to postpone the matter of the two rings of power to the next day – as this was a discussion that would surely take time – and had then departed on one last accord regarding Elrond’s plan to campaign for the rule of the kingdom despite his lower birth. Now, when it was just them in the quiet of the throne hall of Grey Havens, he seemed like he expected Galadriel to fight him on this, which she absolutely did not plan to.

“I wish to speak to you regarding a different matter,” she told him and Elrond stopped the pacing which he had begun shortly before. He seemed preoccupied.

“The crown,” he said and Galadriel took a rather long moment to remember what he assumed she meant to quiz him on. “Forgive me, we did not find it. It was nowhere in the woods.”

“And it is better than the alternative,” Galadriel said quickly.

If this was the reason for his distraction, she could ease his worries. Not with the truth of course, because she could not tell him how she had destroyed it using otherworldly powers. Best to let him believe the crown had disappeared.

“But what if someone took it? If the next foe is already in waiting.”

“I think we would know,” she claimed. “Feel for it… that power in the wrong hands, it would feel as a shadow. There is none. I cannot feel it, can you? Better to know it lost and soon forgotten.”

Elrond paused, concentrating as if feeling for the missing ripples of power she spoke of, but after a moment of that, he actually seemed to agree with her. 

“The mithril then?” He tried. “I know we have not yet spoken of it with the council, but I think it would be best if the mithril remained under the mountain, buried with the Balrog, never to be spoken of again.”
“I agree with you,” Galadriel said and her friend seemed only briefly relieved that she was not of a different mind on the matter.

Elrond looked at her, puzzled, as if still trying to figure out why she had stayed behind with him, desperate for something tactical, almost as if he did not really wish to know the real reason which he must have already guessed, of course. He knew her well enough and she knew he had seen the way Halbrand had looked at her during the council meeting.

“Will you let me tell you why I am here?” She asked him.

Elrond sighed. She did not need to. “You wish to marry King Halbrand.”

Silence spread between them for a time in which she nodded and he considered her.

“It would be advantageous to have me as a bridge to the mortal realms,” Galadriel tried. “Politically, I mean. It would be wise.”

Elrond gave her a look which communicated how aware he was that this argument was flimsy at best.

“Revealing Halbrand as half-elven, which would be the only way such a union would be fathomable, might do more harm than good at this point, considering what our late High King just put the humans through – would you not say?”

“A very smart elf once told me that his subjects will have to find out eventually,” Galadriel said, calling back to their talk five years ago in the White Tower. “When it turns out that he does not age like they do. – And having their beloved king be half-elven could help repair the lack of trust they will surely now feel for our kind.”

“So, politics?” Elrond questioned, asking if this was to be her official reasoning and resumed his anxious pacing of the hall.

“Among other things,” she replied.

“But you are already married,” Elrond said like he was bound to and Galadriel winced for a moment, briefly plagued with a pang of guilt – but she could not conjure up any more than that. 

The previous night had tilted her world completely askew, reorganised all of her priorities, shifted her very being.

“To a ghost,” she said. “And who is to enforce those old rules in this world? Gil-galad is dead, the Valar are far away and appear utterly uninterested in our dealings here. – Should I not be able to decide my own fate?” 

“I do not know what you wish to hear from me,” Elrond said. “I told you already there is only pain for you in a match such as this. He will die before you and you will suffer with grief.”

“Or I might die before him,” she told her best friend, remembering Arondir’s fate. “I nearly did, at that trial. There are no guarantees, for none of us. Your own mother chose your father despite his birth and she did so for a reason – because being with him even if only for a couple of centuries was better than never being with him at all. I have had my great elven love and he died. I survived. When I lose Halbrand, I will survive too. But I will not survive living the next couple of hundred years beside him and watch him marry someone else.”

And this was maybe the barest truth of it. Not purpose, not fate nor destiny. She simply could not bear seeing him with anyone else. He was hers and she was not done with him. She was not done with this trial, she was not done with this world. It was hers and she had suffered for it and she could take on a lot but she would not watch him be with someone else. She would not suffer it. It was selfish, yes. Possessive, most definitely. It was something so much bigger beside all of that, too.

Elrond winced, as if to tell her not to continue. She did anyway.

“I love him,” she said.

Elrond pinched the bridge of his nose and walked a couple of paces away from her.

“As you said, you are free to choose, no one would dare challenge you on your decisions,” he said eventually. “You do not need my permission.”

“But I would like your blessing,” she said.

Elrond released a deep breath, finally stilled fully, and turned around to look at her once more. Then he sighed.

“You have it.”

***

Galadriel returned to her quarters shortly thereafter and was not surprised to find Mairon waiting for her on her balcony. He turned around when he heard her enter and the sun set behind him, casting him in golden light. It softened his features, making him seem young and innocent. Galadriel’s heart beat violently up to her throat just by the look of him.

He inclined his head, wordlessly asking the one question still unanswered between them.

Galadriel shrugged, and then finally nodded.

“Yes,” she said, when he was already striding towards her, his face blazing. “I will marry you.”

By the time she finished uttering her acceptance, he had already swept her off of her feet.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY: QUEEN OF THE SOUTHLANDS

Although Galadriel was loath to lend much credence to Mairon’s theory on their love being of a greater machination or purpose, the way that everything fell together to ease their transition from King and Commander to King and Queen, felt much like cogs in a machine entirely designed to function seamlessly.

For one, the discussion of the rings went over much less painstaking than Galadriel had anticipated. They had all met, the Great Council, led by Elrond whose election to High King of the Greatest Elven Realm was all but promised, and before the rings, they discussed the matter of the mithril.

To Galadriel’s surprise, it was Durin and Dissa who suggested to put explosives to the remains of Khazad-Dûm, bury it with the Balrog and the remainder of the Mithril, put the gate under eternal, heavy guard and make a new home of a smaller mine further South. Galadriel questioned whether or not this was an attempt of the dwarves to mine for more mithril in secret – but she found she rather believed in Durin’s growing mistrust of the ore. This was also evident a short while later, when the safeguarding of the mithril turned out to be a bargaining chip in the dwarf king’s next request.

He wished for the rings of power to be destroyed. This was the most strenuous part of the talks; convincing the dwarves that the rings should be held onto. In the end, Galadriel suggested that much like the mithril, the rings of power should remain unused, stored away in secret and guarded henceforth. She put forward the idea of them remaining in Lindon under Elrond’s guard, but – understandably, after what had just happened – neither the dwarves nor the Gondorians much supported the concept of the rings remaining in Elven hands.

For a time, it was floated that Gondor should store one of the rings while Galadriel would continue to hold on to the other. But this did not get past Elrond. He too much feared the hunger, with which Isildur reacted to the suggestion of having the second ring in his possession.

It was Elrond ultimately, who suggested that Halbrand receive Gil-galad’s ring, as it had been in the mortal’s possession along with Nenya, while Galadriel was held in captivity. He claimed that this proved how Halbrand could be counted upon to not lose himself to temptation, but Galadriel knew Elrond well enough to know that he merely wished to have her closeby to guard both of the rings. And at present, him and Bronwyn were the only two other souls who knew about the betrothal – so he must have expected Galadriel to have a certain amount of sway and power over the supposed half-elf well into the future.

Galadriel would have expected more of a fight, and did not know herself how to feel about how easily in the end, it all came together. But she did agree that she felt more comfortable having both of the rings in her own dominion, even if this dominion was shared with Mairon, who might have been the most dangerous being to share it with. Such would be the theme of their marriage, however, and she did not delude herself into thinking otherwise.

She loved him, was prepared to spend every day with him, but she remembered his true being still. He would always be tempted by power and she would always have to be beside him, tempering that lust. Diverting it, if she could, to herself. Such as it appeared to be, this task seemed one easily enough completed, however. For Mairon could not keep his hands off of her.

***

They left Lindon half a week later, Elrond now officially king of the largest Elven realm, their host joining Isildur’s and Durin’s and they stopped over near the Misty Mountains to bid their farewells to the dwarves, and then stopped over in Osgiliath to witness Isildur’s coronation. It was there that Halbrand revealed to Isildur both his late father’s intentions of him marrying the new King’s little sister, his pretend half-elven heritage and the betrothal to Galadriel.

Not that the King of the Southlands any longer made any great effort to hide his desire for his Elven Commander either. She tried to keep him somewhat at bay in public, at least until they had had a chance to inform his subjects of their future plans, but the king had taken to holding her hand in “secret” in a fashion that was reckless at best.

It turned out that Eärien, in their absence, had struck up a romance with a distant cousin, who had been put in charge of Osgiliath – and Isildur decided that they were to be wed and given regency of a new city to be built, perched up on the mountain range, which separated them from Halbrand’s kingdom. They would name it Minas Ithil and it would strengthen the relationship of the sister kingdoms even more, as was Isil’s great wish. So, Halbrand’s intent to marry Galadriel was no cause for strain with the mortals of Gondor. Everything was falling into place.

Soon, they had returned to adoring crowds, celebrating their victory in the West, and Galadriel’s only worry was how these crowds would react to the reveal of their beloved king’s heritage. To Galadriel’s growing bewilderment, it turned out that all it took for this to go over equally as smoothly, was Bronwyn making a fiery speech on the eve following the announcement.

***

King Halbrand had given the news via town barkers and as expected, the citizens received the revelation, as well as the announcement of the impending nuptials with mixed emotions. A host of those subjects, who had not taken the reveal well, marched on the White Tower steps, where Halbrand and Galadriel met them. It was Bronwyn however, whose voice rang out over the crowd.

She held a passionate plea for understanding and faithful love to the king: Yes, he was half-elven, but he had also just marched on the Elven High King - and had returned victorious. His Queen-to-be was also an elf and she had stood and fought by his side for their kingdom since its infancy.

Bronwyn hollered across the square about how none of them would live safely and prosperously, had it not been for King Halbrand and Commander Galadriel. How he was now part of an alliance of friendships that spanned the entire Western Middle Earth. Four Kings; Elrond, Durin, Isildur and Halbrand, and two Queens, Dissa and soon, Galadriel, had stood together against a would-be-tyrant and were now dedicated to a lasting peace. The Southlanders had but one duty to be deserving of such serenity – to continue trusting their king. He would put his subjects first, protect them and serve them, he had proven this time and time again, as had his betrothed. And this was all they needed.

Eventually, Bronwyn led the people in the chants of the South. The grounds of our fathers, the land of our sons! All Hail King Halbrand, the true King of the Southlands! And after a while: All Hail Queen Galadriel, all hail Queen Galadriel! As Galadriel and Halbrand retreated to the White Tower, their people were still cheering thusly.

***

Galadriel followed Mairon to his quarters in the belvedere and leaned against one of the columns of the large four-poster bed that he sat down on, smirking at her.

“I know you do not want to say it, but you feel it,” he stated easily, shirking off his shoes.

“Do not start,” she told him.

“It is all so easy,” he said, giving words to what she had felt in the very fabric of reality since their first night together. “Every day I am waiting for you to accuse me of somehow aligning all these pieces to fall into place myself.”

“It would be like you to have schemed in such a way to make it thus,” she told him, not without grim commendation. “But I know better.”

“How so?” He leaned forward again, playfully, and unbuttoned his jerkin.

“You could not have accounted for all of this, could not have planned for this exact outcome,” she stated, unfastening her bodice. “Because you were never sure I would give my consent to this union.”

Mairon tilted his head at her as he pushed off his breeches and finally scooted back onto the mattress in only his billowy, long shirt, padding the empty space beside him.

“Do not deny it,” Galadriel told him, stepping out of her slippers and cast off her chemise to the side.

Stark naked, she joined him on the bed.

“I would never,” he murmured when she climbed on top of him and tangled his hand in her hair. “But you cannot deny that ever since you have consented, it is as if all the fates conspire to ease our path.”

“You and your fates,” she muttered, shaking her head, enjoying how the tremor of just this little movement lit the flame of passion within both their bodies. “I would not have thought you would be this superstitious or beholden to the assumed machinations of the Maker.”

“Is it superstition if one knows it is possible?” He mused, grabbing her legs to spread them so she wound up straddling him, his hardening manhood caught between them, the friction making her gasp and roll her hips against him on instinct. He shuddered, but kept talking.

“Is it then not a simple matter of consideration? You, my beloved, were born, but I was made. Who is to say that there is not a design for us? I told you once that when the grip of Morgoth around my neck seized, I felt the light of the One again. That is the same way I have felt in your presence ever since I found you.”

“Who is to say He did not put some of his light in you to lead me back on the right path when I went astray?” He continued. “How hard is it to believe you possess such a light, when not a single being fails to note your hair of gold and silver and your kin even calls you the Lady of Light? – That does not feel superstitious to me. And I do not feel beholden to the Maker, I feel thankful. He knew you would be my penance, my redemption… my salvation. And that is why everything is so simple now.”

“You seem very confident in that,” Galadriel noted, grinding against him a little, savouring the way it made him short of breath. “That everything is simple. Where I fear doom, just around the next corner.”

“But why?” He challenged, stealing a quick kiss and then wrapped an arm around her to turn her around and wedge her underneath him, and just like that, he entered her. “You have been afraid of doom for centuries, yet we hold all the power now.”

A deep stroke followed.

Galadriel moaned softly, canting her hips up to welcome him in deeper. As he continued to talk, his voice more brittle, he punctuated every sentence with another thrust.

“The mithril will soon be forgotten.” he panted. “The rings are safe with us. There is a peace among like minded friends. Devoted to our ends entirely. Peace. And order.” He bottomed out and then snapped back against her forcefully, hitting just the spot inside her that made her face contort into a silent oh. “And here I am, ah, your biggest foe, the enemy you sought all this time. Desperately devoted to you alone.”

As if to confirm his words, Galadriel grabbed him by the neck to draw him down to kiss her, scratching his scalp to a shudder. He reciprocated it hungrily, biting her lower lip and quickened his pace and force.

“Can you be happy like this?” He asked her as he broke the kiss, the words strained, breathy. “With me?”

“Are you happy?” She asked him, much in the same laboured way.

“Unfathomably,” he replied and looked down at her where she shook with his steady movements, his eyes pure warmth and pure light.

And then he fucked her until her vision whited out.

Hours later, she was wrapped in Mairon’s arms as the last rays of sunshine painted the king’s bedchamber in a golden hue, the sky outside pink with a marvellous sunset, and Galadriel watched their hands intertwined, and delighted in the sensations him gently fiddling with her fingers caused.

“Do you think a fortnight will be enough to mount a wedding?” He asked softly.

“A fortnight,” she repeated. “You are awfully impatient.”

“Why wait?”

“I think a fortnight will be fine,” she decided. “It will give everyone enough time to come.”

“And then you will finally be Queen in name, too,” he said and kissed the top of her head.

She had a dim sense that she could question if her title was his way of making her one of his tools but then again, he had given her no reason to doubt his sincerity and if their incessant physical exaltations were any indication, he was more than prepared to bind himself to her fully in turn – in such a way that would make him tempered in all the ways a Maiar could come to be tempered.

And their marriage would bring with it an expectation of heirs. Heirs that would cement his state, bound to his human form. He would remain immortal of course, but he could no longer meander from his current state. He made himself weak for her everytime they lay together and he showed no signs of wanting to stop or slow those particular exploits.

***

“Do you feel stifled by the etiquettes surrounding our nuptials?” Mairon asked her, a week later, when the other royal houses had long been notified and the preparations for their wedding were in full swing.

“What do you mean?” She questioned, turning around in bed to lay on her stomach so she could see him better.

“I mean, you are a formidable army commander, a strategist, a great, powerful mind, yet they all come to you asking for your opinion on flowers and whether or not to have venison for the feast, what sort of embellishments you wish to have on your gown… I wonder if it is dreadfully pedestrian for you?”

“I do not mind it,” Galadriel replied. “I had no say in my first wedding. It was all dictated by customs and over before it really began. I enjoy having more of a hand in it this time. To choose our own customs from the designs of men.”

They had concurred on making their wedding as close to the human traditions as would still befit them, to show their allegiance to their people. This would entail being wed on the steps of the White Tower by a Priest of the One and saying vows of fealty and faithfulness to one another.

“Ah, yes, have you decided on concluding with the exchange of rings?” Mairon asked her with a smirk.

“Those rings are supposed to be locked away,” she reminded him, knowing what he was hinting at; he wished to use the rings of power for the occasion.

“They will be. After the fact,” he shrugged. “They would be merely symbolic.”

“We should talk to Elrond. The whole council, really, if we do that,” she mused. “I do not think it wise.”

“You are right,” Mairon relented eventually. “They are much too recognizable anyway.”

***

A week later, the day of the nuptials was upon the kingdom of the South, and every innkeeper in the city and beyond made the greatest profits of the year welcoming visitors from all the other realms. Even the otherwise evasive realms of Rhûn and Umbar sent out emissaries to attend the event and broker peace treaties upon the occasion. As was another human tradition, Galadriel had spent the eve of the wedding not in Mairon’s chambers atop the tower as she had taken to since their return from Gondor, but in her own now slightly dusty quarters.

It was currently midday and at three in the afternoon, the ceremony would take place and about an hour later would see their reception in the Great Hall. Galadriel had had a flutter in her belly the entire day and it seemed odd that she had no issues charging headfirst into violent combat with not so much as a moment to prepare herself for carnage – but now she was nervous. She tried not to let it affect her too much, instead focusing on the way Swete wound her hair together, evenly and gentle in a way that made her tingle warmly, remembering how her mother had done the same thing when she was just a little girl.

Galadriel supposed it was the fact that Swete now was a mother herself, although her daughter little Galadriel, called Gala for short, was just a year old and had barely any hair to braid yet. Still, Swete had grown up, grown softer and stronger at the same time, and it reminded Galadriel once over how short those human lives were. How quickly things changed.

Five years ago Swete had been a girl of sixteen, comely and plain. Now she was one-and-twenty, wedded, a mother, and by Galadriel’s side at court everyday, doing her duty as her Lady’s Maid. For Galadriel not so much had changed but for Swete everything was different. She had grown an entire new human inside her in the meantime. It was wild to consider it, how that time had felt more like a blink to Galadriel than anything else when for her friend, it was an entirely new world. It should remind her to not take any time for granted. Behind her, Swete suddenly stilled and groaned a little.

“What is it?” Galadriel asked and caught Swete’s hand on her shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Swete said and Galadriel saw her reflection in the looking glass frown. “It is just the child, he is stretching.”

“He?” Asked Galadriel, looking past her shoulder at Swete’s round pregnant belly stretching her woollen dress taut. “Are you sure?”

“The midwife is certain.” Swete shrugged. “Because I carry him low.”

“Is that not a myth?” Galadriel wondered.

“I don’t know.” Swete shrugged again. “I feel different than I did with Gala. – I was actually meaning to ask you something, my Lady.”

“Anything.”

“If he really is a boy, Theo and I have been talking about what to name him,” Swete began. “We were considering Halbrand but then this might be strange considering you two are to be married. So, we had a different idea, and I actually wished to ask for your blessing for the name. Given that it is an… elven name, we do not want to be disrespectful.”

“Arondir,” Galadriel murmured and caught Swete’s eyes in the mirror, touched. “You do not require my blessing for that. And I am sure it will make Bronwyn very happy.”

“It would mean a lot to Theo, too,” Swete mused. “Arondir was as much of a father to him as he ever had. He is doing so well with Gala, considering…”

“Theo is a good man.” Galadriel nodded with a smile.

“I am lucky to have him.” Swete mirrored that smile and touched her hand to her belly, breathing into what must be another little bout of uncomfortableness as her baby moved inside of her.

“He is lucky to have you, too,” Galadriel told her.

“As is King Halbrand with you.” Swete inclined her head. “Some people don’t trust the elves, but I always have. They say elves are selfish and think that they are superior to all others. But you came and saved us, when we were just a host of scattered tribes with nothing in it for yourself and you have always shown us only respect and love. – I believe we are all blessed to receive you as our Queen.”

Galadriel pursed her lips, could not help feeling a little pang of guilt, because this was not entirely true. When they had freed the Southlands, it had not been purely for their sake. It had been for Galadriel’s own gratification in a sense. A part of her strive for revenge. Much like when she had dragged Halbrand across the Sundering Sea, when she still believed him to be the long lost heir to the mortal kingdom of the South.

All of it, she had used to her own ends, to drive out the shadow from Middle Earth because it was her selfish desire. Because she wanted to be the one to defeat the darkness, to rule over it, to cast it out and emerge the victor. It had very little to do with the humans themselves, if she was honest. Swete had no inkling about this, though. To her, Galadriel was without fault. It was an adoration that felt heavy somehow, weighty, hard to live up to. Galadriel mused for a second how it was easier to live up to people’s fear than to people’s love, wondered if that had been the reason for Sauron’s fall in the end.

She was terrified it could become Halbrand’s much in the same way – but she was there now, wearing a gorgeous white and gold-threaded gown with long bell sleeves almost to the floor and an intricate, beaded headdress Swete placed onto her woven hair, ready to promise him forever. She would safeguard him, in her way. To make sure he would not fall to his will to control, she would have to control him, and she had to do it without him noticing. So they could both be what these mortals deserved, and make sure that the short, short time they were given on Middle Earth was worth the while. Which gave her an idea regarding Swete and the rest of her family.

***

Galadriel did not tell her Lady’s Maid about this idea however, she waited until Swete had retired to her quarters to ready herself, and her mother in law came to fetch Galadriel for the beginning of the ceremony. Bronwyn herself had not been much changed by the last five years, except for the odd deeper line on her face and a couple of grey hairs. But she was still beautiful and proud. Strong and gracious – and not afraid of anything.

“Everything is ready,” Bronwyn told her. “The king awaits you on the stairs. Everyone has gathered. – You look beautiful.”

“Thank you, so do you,” Galadriel replied.

Bronwyn wore an emerald green robe and her hair looked much like Swete’s handiwork as well. Bronwyn smiled at her, though the corners of her lips were a little stiff.

“You are not pleased with me,” Galadriel stated, knowing the reason for the hesitation. “For marrying Halbrand. You are unhappy.”

“Not unhappy. A little envious,” admitted Bronwyn without a hint of self-pity. “Once I thought we were alike with our loves – but now I see we were never the same. You get to have your love for longer than I and my children’s children will be alive. I guess that stings a little. But I am not unhappy. I am pleased with you and for you and wish you both only the best.”

Galadriel nodded, she believed the mortal woman. Though she did not know how to ease her unrest. She only thought to present her with her idea, maybe that would soften the rough edges of the day.

“I have been thinking… You and yours have done so much for us these past years,” Galadriel began. “Now that I am Queen, I would like to give you a gift as a show of my gratitude. The settlement on the sea of Núrnen is growing and growing. It needs governance. I think it would make for a fine duchy for you, Theo and Swete.”

To Galadriel’s surprise, Bronwyn, instead of elated, looked almost offended. “Do you wish to send me away?!”

“No, no, absolutely not,” Galadriel hurried to say, taking a quick step towards the woman. “I merely wished to… You have given so much, sacrificed so much. And Theo – he has gone to battle with us now. He nearly died in Lindon, I was told. Swete would spend her life by my side but soon she will have two children and I could not bear being the reason she is kept from seeing them grow up. – And we, Halbrand and I, trust no one more to govern a settlement than your family.”

Bronwyn finally nodded slowly and her face softened, finally looking as flattered as Galadriel meant for her to be.

“Thank you,” she said. “I believe Theo and Swete would rejoice in the task. But my place is here. In the city, by your side. At the king’s side.” She lowered her voice and her head and added in an almost conspiratory manner, with a sly smile: “And there is someone here I cannot leave.”

“Oh?” Asked Galadriel, taking yet another step. This was new to her, but likely she just had been preoccupied with her own life, too busy to see that Bronwyn had struck up a new romance. “Who did you–?”

“An incorrigible man,” Bronwyn replied quietly, her sheepish smile was more audible in her voice than clear on her features. She looked up. “He thinks he is the smartest man in any room and loves hearing himself talk. – A piece of work, but I enjoy the challenge more than anything else.”

“That sounds familiar,” Galadriel chuckled, thought of Mairon and then tried to clue together whom Bronwyn spoke of until after another moment– “Brod.”

Now Bronwyn fully looked up and smiled, inclining her head.

“I guess I can see it,” Galadriel mused. “I thought he might be a little too young and spirited for you… a little too mouthy.”

“I thought so too, at first,” sighed Bronwyn. “But when I was broken, going head to head with him was the thing I had to put myself back together for. I could not give him the satisfaction of thinking he could beat me in anything, so I had to rise up.”

“Sounds familiar, as well,” Galadriel mumbled and then, without pause, bridged the remaining distance to the other woman to give her a long hug. “I am so happy for you, and of course I would never send you away. The duchy is yours if Theo and Swete want it, and you can stay here with us for as long as you like.”

“Thank you, my Queen,” Bronwyn said, letting her go.

“Not your Queen yet,” Galadriel reminded her with a small smile.

“And not ever, if we keep dallying,” Bronwyn chastised her lightly. “Come on now, your husband-to-be awaits.”

***

Galadriel had to adjust her eyes to the blinding daylight outside, the white steps reflecting the sun up to blind her. It took her a moment to see the massive crowd gathered at the foot of the tower. Her heart was pounding, making her a little dizzy, but she did see Elrond at the front of the congregation. Made out Mithrandir and another wizard she had heard would attend but was startling to see. Saruman stood next to the one they called Gandalf, still the air of a newly incarnated Istar about him; slightly confused and bewildered by the splendid Middle Earth.

Soon though, Galadriel saw nothing else but Mairon as he stood a couple of steps down from her, looking up at her like she was the moon on a starless night. She could not think of anything else then either.

The ceremony was a lengthy affair, full of kind words by the priest, and cheers of the crowd. Finally, after a number of songs by the Gondorian choir and a group of their finest musicians, came the most important part of the ceremony. The exchange of vows and rings.

Galadriel and King Halbrand promised each other love and faithfulness. Galadriel received her new crown that fit above the headdress she already wore like the two were a perfect set and then one of the children from court brought the two wedding bands in a finely carved ivory box. The priest said his pretty words, invited Halbrand to put Galadriel’s ring on her finger – and it took her all but a second to understand what her betrothed had done.

Her eyes widened as he pushed it onto her fingers and felt the familiar rush of power spread through her body like a shockwave.

“You did not,” she mouthed but he just smirked and whispered a ‘shhh’.

As she mechanically placed his ring on his finger, she could tell by the feel of it, that it was the second one.

Halbrand had reforged the rings of power. He had even reworked the jewels, her white ones and his blue ones, given them a new polished cut and placed them into the band. They were no longer recognisable as the old rings – but as she recalled their last conversation on the matter, this had been his plan exactly.

“Merely symbolic,” he whispered into her ear as he was permitted to kiss her cheek to seal the union – and then they were declared husband and wife.

“We will discuss this later,” she hissed back but kept a big smile on her face.

***

It was not until much later, way into the night after a roaring reception, that they moved into what would henceforth be their shared quarters in the belvedere, and Galadriel finally called Mairon out on his deception. She put her ring on the desk by the window and stared him down until he did the same with his.

“This was badly done,” she told him. “I did not give you leave to do that.”

“You did not get to give me leave for anything,” he retorted easily.

“I do now,” she said sternly. “I am your queen.”

“And I am your king,” he said, much in the same stern fashion but she could tell by the twinkle in his eye that this was a sort of game to him. He was deeply pleased with himself for his hoodwinking.

“They will be locked away,” Galadriel said, not in the mood for a mock-fight, this was too important.

“Of course.” He bowed and smirked still, stepped closer to her. “I merely sought to make sure we could use them whenever we needed to without prejudice.”

“You said we have peace now, why would we need them?” She challenged, trying to keep her breathing even despite the fact that he touched her stomach and pulled at the binds of her stays, then hooking his fingers under the binds and loosening them one by one.

“Would you have me destroy them after all?” He exacted and knew he had her with this, because of course she could not allow that either, not with the chance of further threats never truly far from Middle Earth and his greatest power diminishing bit by bit whenever they lay together.

The rings were their insurance and they needed them. She just wished he had not chosen them to make a game of bait-and-switch of their ring ceremony – and that he wasn’t so darn proud of himself for it. It made her feel silly, played for a fool.

Her bodice fell to the floor with a quiet thud and Mairon’s face softened.

“Call me sentimental,” he murmured, unbuttoning her underdress slowly. “The truth is… when we first made the rings, my design was always for you and I to wear them together, side by side. – I had to indulge… just once.”

Galadriel sighed, feeling her own features melt in the face of him, because the absolute worst thing was that she believed him. He looked utterly sincere; Sauron, the romantic.

He then attached his mouth to her neck, which made it even harder to stay mad at him.

“You lied to me again,” she protested meekly, wrapping her arms around his torso to pull him closer.

“I meant to surprise you,” he mumbled, briefly pausing his attention and then reattached his lips to her skin, and then carried her to the bed as if she weighed nothing.

“Mairon,” she argued but it carried little bite because she shuddered as she said it, even more so, when he turned her around, bent her over and put her hands around the post to hold onto.

“I’ll lock them in the deepest dungeon first thing in the morning,” he promised and shoved up her dress, the night air coming in from the balcony doors hitting her bare bottom. “Now, submit to me, my Queen of the Southlands. Just for now.”

A flash of hot desire coursed through Galadriel, intensified even more when she heard him step out of his trousers and then felt his fingers gently prepare her for their wedding night. She did not need much preparation, and soon, he smoothed out her back with his hand, pushed her down further and then slowly sank into her from behind. Even if she had wanted, she could not have held on to her chagrin, because shortly after, she lost herself to their union, to his mouth, his tongue, his sex.

After, when they lay entwined, coming down from their respective highs, he raked his fingers gently through her hair which had long since come undone.

“Are you still angry with me?” He asked her.

“I was not angry, I was vexed,” she told him and he chuckled.

“I guess I’ll have eternity now to learn the difference,” he mused and kissed the side of her face.

She rolled her eyes but sank only further into his embrace, cuddling into the mattress, looking up at him where he hovered above her, leaning on his elbow. His skin shone pale and pretty in the moonlight, a dust of freckles peeking up from under his light chest hairs. He studied her face for a while, a smile creeping up onto his features that was as wide as it was dazzling. He knew she had forgotten her earlier misgivings already.

“You are so beautiful,” he mumbled, tracing her jaw gently with his fingers. “You were so beautiful all day. And soft. I’ve never seen you like this – Does it trouble you?”

“What do you mean?” He wrinkled her forehead, unsure what he was trying to say.

“I mean even though I first met you in a shift, whenever I think of you, I picture you in armour,” he replied evenly. “You are always so strong. Impenetrable, a warrior through and through. I am the first to admit that I am sentimental… romantic, even. I always loved beautiful things; creating them, beholding them, beholding you. But you – and I say this with all my love – you are a grim fortress most of the time. Yet these last few weeks you have been light as air, your smile comes easy, your laugh rings out across the halls. I kiss you and your face is liquid. You are soft. And I wonder if that is cumbersome for you.”

Galadriel could not help the weak laugh that escaped her. The things he saw…

“I do not mind being soft,” she replied, caressing his arm that was wrapped around her torso. “I love it, actually. – You have seen my childhood. I was wild and free, but by the One, was I soft. Like weeds in the wind. But then the war came and my brother died and I had to be strong. I could not afford sentimentalities. I could not let myself rest or be fluid, bendable. My life depended on me being as steel, my mission depended on it.”

Mairon’s face grew serious first, then pained. “I am sorry. I told you this before but you did not know who I was then. You deserve to hear it now that you know everything. – I am so sorry. About your brother, about the war, about you having to harden yourself for it, about all of it that I had a hand in and all of it I let happen. I do not deserve your forgiveness and I cannot fathom how you found it in your heart to go down this path with me but I know that I owe you my life every day, Galadriel. I need you to know that everyday, too, I suffer with the knowledge of what pain my actions caused you.”

“I forgive you,” she told him without pause, because she had done so for a while and he deserved to hear it. “I forgave you a long time ago.”

Mairon breathed out harshly and it seemed that the tears that welled up in his eyes surprised him most of all.

“How?!” He breathed, almost toneless.

“I do not know,” she said honestly. “I guess I understood that for true redemption one needs to be forgiven. And you have proven that in your heart of hearts, even despite your strive for dominion, you are capable of choosing the light over darkness… if coaxed in the right direction. For you, that’s plenty, I think. Worthy. Worthy of forgiveness to me.”

“I told you I would not be dark, not with you at my side,” he muttered, and removed his hand from her body to wipe the moisture from his eyes. He seemed proud, elated… and beyond grateful.

She kissed him then, passionately and deeply, and everything but his lips and his arms around her felt faint and foreign. She had bound him to her, had bound him to the light as he had bound her to his power, with those rings he had invented – and he was right, it was not dark. He was not so dangerous, not when tempered by her. All was well if they were together. Middle Earth was save under their guard, following their path to healing and order. He was a just king under her guard and she could be soft now that she did not have to live under the threat of his darkness.

She grinned, kissing him harder, and then they made love once more until she collapsed in his arms and then disappeared for a blink of restful sleep.

***

Galadriel awoke, feeling heavenly. That sweet, subtle sting of intimacy pounding between her legs. She stretched heartily, her heart beating to the soft steady one of her husband by her side – and she expected him to move with her as she did, expecting his eyes upon her because she was so used to him watching her sleep now. But to her great surprise, his arm lay heavy as lead on her and she twisted, as quickly as she could in his grip to figure out why.

“Mairon,” she whispered as his arm fell away, pushed off by her movement and for a second, she felt red hot panic rise up like bile in her throat and she shook him, terrified that somehow, for some ungodly reason his human body had expired in the night – but it had not.

Mairon shuddered a little, shook, startled and opened his eyes on a large, confused yawn. Then he fought for his eyes to open fully and they grew larger yet as she got into focus for him.

“You were sleeping,” she said, bewildered. “How were you sleeping?!”

Mairon looked at her for a second, then half-chuckled, releasing a long breath as he scooted up to rest his back against the carved headboard.

“What?” She asked him, puzzled by his reaction.

“I did not pay enough attention,” he mused and put a strand of hair behind her ear gently. “You are very distracting.”

“Tell me what happened,” she begged, his obtuseness vexing her. She was not particularly patient in the mornings. “Paid attention to what?”

“The cloud,” he whispered and something she could not name danced behind his eyes as he leaned forward and touched her face once more. “We have torn it in half.”

“What do you mean?” She questioned, growing uneasy – and in the next second, her whole life changed.

“You are pregnant,” he murmured and his face split into a grin.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE: A MONSTER TAMED

Galadriel could not feel her face. Pregnant. Of course it did not really come as a surprise for they had lain together almost every night since that first time in Lindon, and she had not spared a single thought regarding the prevention of such an outcome. Still, she was shocked now that it had happened. She did not doubt him for a second, though. He must have felt it where she would not be able to for a while. Her body was unchanged and even her spirit had not yet noted the new life forming inside of her.

Her face must have fallen in some way, because Mairon’s soon did, too, turning quizzical.

“Are you not pleased?” He asked her, a sincere tint of worry in his voice.

“No, I mean, yes,” she said quickly. “Just surprised, is all.”

“It is not like we were particularly careful,” he reminded her and she sat up as well, coming shoulder to shoulder with him.

“And are you? Pleased?” She questioned. “Do you not care that you are bound so much faster to this body now?”

“If I cared, would I have done all of this?” He gestured around them with a shrug. “I have everything I wanted.”

Power, she thought, and adoration. And the chance to create a world in his image. This was effectively what he now had; all that he had wanted. Not in the way she would have expected of Sauron, Morgoth’s servant, but maybe what Mairon had wanted before his corruption. In a way, it was consistent. He had set out for much the same thing, following and loving Melkor. Now he loved her and his goals had not changed, they had just transformed to align more with hers.

“So you are pleased?” She asked him again.

“Yes,” he replied. “I always wondered… seeing elves and dwarves and men… I always wondered what it would be like to be a father.” He leaned over to her a little, his voice low and cheeky and his head tilted. “I cannot promise you, I will be a good one, though. I never had one to learn it from.”

“I have found children have a way to teach you,” she said mindlessly and he tilted his head to the other side.

“That is what I heard anyway,” she said, unsure where that thought had come from, she only knew she did not want him to fret. “And if anything, there is still two of us and just one child.” She turned her face to him. “Right? There is just the one?”

Mairon chuckled. “Yes, just one.”

Galadriel sighed with relief. “Good. Carrying one is difficult enough.”

“Ah, yes,” he mused. “The famed elven pregnancies. – I am sorry I consigned you to that fate.”

“Well, we both have,” she allowed with a small smile. “And I will have time to adjust to the state. It will be a year of it.”

“Do you know what the best thing about that is?” He winked at her and leaned forward to put his hands on her. “I’ll have you to myself for another year and we will not have to worry about me getting you pregnant.”

She laughed – and he soon caught that laugh under his lips.

***

They opted to keep the happy news to themselves for the time being. One because it would be unfathomable how they would know already, one night after conceiving, and two, Galadriel did not wish to hear Elrond’s thoughts on the whole matter when it was quite so new to herself and he could still tell them to her in person. Thus, the King and Queen of the Southlands used the morning to see off their visitors, talk to Mithrandir and Saruman and hear of their travels through Middle Earth before they left to resume them.

The dwarves, Elrond and his host of elves left soon thereafter and only Isildur and his court remained for another couple of days, for there were still talks to be had with the representatives of Rhun and Umbar.

Once this was done, Galadriel finally told Mairon about her plans of handing over the reigns of the settlement by the Sea of Nurnen to Theo and Swete and he welcomed the thought.

Swete herself accepted, touched and flattered, but she was still sad to go and insisted she would remain in Galador until her son was born. Galadriel was glad for it. After all, she did not intend for her Lady’s Maid to start a new, more quiet life elsewhere for her own benefit. She would miss the girl dearly but giving her the chance to make her own choices and design her own life, was simply what Galadriel felt she owed her.

Aside from preparing for that parting sorrow, which was still a couple of months off, life in Galador continued in much the same easy fashion as it had been ever since their victorious return from Lindon. It all remained seamless. All the cogs turned in the right motions.

Mairon locked the rings away as he had promised, their subjects were building more stone houses with the help of docile orcs, and all together they developed their Southorn customs and traditions and in the rest of Middle Earth, peace reigned.

Everything was well. Until eventually, after three quiet months, Swete and Theo left, and Galadriel’s pregnancy made itself fully known to her.

***

It seemed as soon as her child was solidly settled in her womb, the drain began on Galadriel’s mind. Her body barely felt it, barely registered what little weight her silent passenger held, but her spirit suddenly had to contend with the stirring of another intimately close. It was familiar in a far-off way, how that little new thing tugged at her.

It reminded her of the way Mairon ever so often still tried to gain entrance to her walled-off thoughts – and of something else, even more like it, which she refused to interrogate more with every passing day. Still, it remained. She knew the feeling and she knew it would not get better for a while. In fact, it would only get worse.

***

Mairon was the one who noted most of her irritableness, of course, because she sought to hide her state until the very last possible moment from everyone else. She did not want to be treated differently. For while, yes, she did enjoy being softer and more indulgent these days of beautiful and gentle things, she did not want to be perceived as weak or helpless. Sadly, being pregnant often made people treat one as if one was glass. And if there was one thing Galadriel was certainly not alike to, it was this.

It was plenty enough for her taste that her husband had taken to touching her as if she were a raw egg. When they lay together, he was always insisting on being tender, always careful, always precious with her and time and time again, she had to coax some of the fire out of him that she so much enjoyed about their love making.

The moments she could make him feral enough to pull her hair and manhandle her were incidentally when she could forget about what she was growing underneath her heart. When he pinned her down and had his way with her, she was only herself, her mind empty except for the way she desired him – and she needed this more than he could understand.

When they were done, he would always seem a little guilty, until she would reassure him that she wanted him rough like she had made him, hungry and insatiable and a little bit unhinged. Still, with every passing month, it became harder and harder to drag the animal out of him. The more her belly grew – still small enough to hide under dresses, but visible to one who saw her naked nightly – the more tender he became, the more reverent. There were nights where he would fall asleep for a short time, cradling her belly. And sometimes he would talk to it! Almost as if she was not there.

He would talk to their child and tell them about the Southlands, about the Sundering Sea, about Middle Earth, sometimes even about Aman. It was endearing, yes, but it also bothered her a little bit, because she wanted his undiluted attention at times and she felt of two very conflicting minds about it because the child very much reached back to its father in turn. Galadriel felt all this reverberating in her own skull. It was confusing at best and unnerving at worst.

Once she finally showed enough to make hiding her state impossible, they informed the kingdom. A day later they had all manner of beautiful flowers and little gifts awaiting them on the palace stairs. The news of an heir to the Southern throne spread like wildfire, not just around their own realm but the others as well. Isildur, Eärien and her new husband sent their congratulations and Elrond visited Galadriel in a dream.

Her best friend had only kind words for her but he seemed to pity her at the same time. She challenged him on his doom and gloom, saying that at least now she would have a legacy of children and grand-children that would give her life meaning once her husband had died.

As they parted, she wondered what she would say to him when after a few centuries, neither King Halbrand nor their children would show any signs or mortality. But she cast that worry off to another day. Her soon all-consuming spiritual discomfort helped to sweep that particular worry far from her mind.

She found herself missing Swete more than she had anticipated, missed the girl’s easy optimism and hearing of her mundane life. It had offered a reprieve from the tiring pregnancy and even as winter had come and gone and slowly but surely, life was returning to Galador and the Southlands, Galadriel still felt glum and burdened. Mairon was by her side always, offering time and time again to give her leave to sit out the council meetings – but those were the few times that her thoughts were occupied with something other than her child.

But then, at the beginning of Galadriel’s seventh month of pregnancy, Mairon had to take Bronwyn and General Brodwick to the orc mines for their lengthy annual summit and insisted Galadriel remain in Galador. Because of her circumstances and because she was to keep reign over the realm while he was away.

***

So, when her husband was gone, she spent her days in endless audiences with subjects, took care of a number of land disputes, drawing up maps trying to drown out the yapping farmers, trying to keep them from brawling in the Great Hall over a few inches of land. She presided over a number of judicial trials – one case of theft and one of a violent drunkard who had laid hands on a woman, which ended in his banishment from the kingdom and one regarding two beaten and neglected children, which soured what rest of her good spirits remained.

After that particular day, she lay in her empty bed, smelling the cushions and wishing Mairon was with her, and then writhed when inside her, her child reached a new milestone that was troubling for the babe and thus excruciating for its mother. The child in her womb had discovered its sex and the mind was slow to adjust to the sudden binary, though not rejecting it outright, which could also happen.

I carry a daughter, Galadriel thought at the same time that her unborn child slotted into her feminine energy, mourning the part of it that had previously been unbound. There was a certain weight to being an elven woman, namely that of having to bear offspring, and although the babe had no concept of that, the weight was felt still. It was an abstruse sort of sense of doom that brought tears to Galadriel’s eyes, much larger in scale than it should have warranted, and she could not help herself, she weeped and weeped and weeped and could not find peace.

Dimly, in the back of her mind in the dead of night, when she wondered how she even had any tears left, a little thought crept up on her. A murmur that she had pushed from her mind ever since her husband told her they were expecting.

This is not real. This is not how it happened.

Galadriel pushed it away. It grew louder.

You have been through this once before. You have carried a child. In the real world. This is not real. This is not how it happened!

At once, Galadriel stopped crying and forbade the thought. No, she was pregnant. She was carrying a daughter. She was a wife. She had found Sauron and bound him in marriage, and in doing so, disarmed him. And she loved him. She was his Queen. She was carrying their child. Of course this was real. Nothing else could be. Nothing else would be. Nothing else was acceptable, nothing else could she endure.

She rejected the idea, and everything to do with it, cast forth from her waking mind that anything other than this could be her reality and her resolve to forget every shred of it was as pitch dark as the night sky.

This is real. This is happening, she thought. The rest is nothing.

Her decision was so firm that it drowned out even her daughter’s unsettled spirit and soon she fell asleep and had a dream for the first time in years and years. She dreamed of a small child with golden hair that clasped her fingers with tiny hands and called her Mama.

***

Upon Mairon’s return, as soon as they were in private, she told him that they were going to have a girl and his eyes filled with tears, fast as a whiplash. He looked almost relieved, something she quizzed him on.

“She will be just like you,” he replied, wiping at his face with the back of his hand. “She has the far superior role model.”

To celebrate the news, and because he professed to have missed her like a limb during his time with the orcs, Mairon declared that the king and queen would take a full afternoon off, leaving Bronwyn in charge, and spirited Galadriel away to the country.

With spring in full bloom, they arrived on a lush, grassy plain at the foot of one of the mountains closer to Orodriun which was home to a giant, beautiful waterfall. A perpetual rainbow sprang from the current, shining in the hues of the butterflies that had made a home of the colourful and multiple spring flowers growing between knee-high grass.

In lieu of guards, Mairon had taken Nenya and put it on Galadriel’s finger, confident that should anything at all not peaceful attempt to touch them, they could fend it off with their combined strength. He was entirely unbothered by any worry as he put down a blanket and set out an assortment of fruits, spreads and lembas bread and then happily fed her grapes for a good ten minutes, just smiling down at her as she lay on her back and counted the clouds that drifted by.

It was warm for the season and the fragrant air already smelled like summer. Galadriel was almost eight months along and massive. She wondered how much more their child would grow with four months still ahead of her, and wondered another thing.

“What?” Mairon asked, putting the grapes aside as she declined the next one he was trying to shove into her mouth. “You have that look again.”

“What look?” She asked, frowning.

He chuckled, discarding the fruit to a bowl nearby and then ran his now free fingers between her knotted eyebrows. “That look, that worrying look. What is it?”

He was so carefree, it was near bewildering – but maybe it just seemed so odd and foreign because the babe would not let her feel the same way.

“I just wondered about her strength,” Galadriel said. “Her powers. I wonder how much Maiar will end up inside her and how to temper her if she’s anything like you.”

“Well, you managed with me pretty well so far,” he quipped, smirking, but she swatted his shoulder.

“You know what I mean,” she insisted. “Children can be willful and not know their own strength. And she will be near one of a kind. There was only one other like her before.”

“Lúthien”, mused Mairon. “She was… remarkable.”

Galadriel sat up, more peeved at his tone than she cared to admit. She had known Lúthien and had loved her much like anyone else that met her – but she did not like to think that her husband had dine the same.

“I heard she wiped the floor with you,” she said thus, a little bit spiteful and Mairon grinned.

“She did indeed.” He nodded. “She was not an exact match in power to me, though at the time I was bound to an elven form and not as strong as I could have been. But she did not best me with power alone.”

“How did she best you, then?” Galadriel asked, feeling her jaw tighten at his bemused tone.

“She was very persuasive,” he said, innuendo thick in his voice and Galadriel’s eyes went large to his great amusement.

“Not like that,” he reassured her quickly. “I think she would have found a way to send me to the void before she would have ever touched me. – But she managed to appeal to my better judgement. She would have killed me eventually had I not let her continue on her path of rescuing Beren. A love like that cannot be quelled. Her vengeance would have made my work for Melkor impossible. – A love like that, it breaks all bounds, breaks the very fabric of the universe. She would never have let herself be killed by me and even if I had, she would have haunted me for all eternity. It was not worth the trouble.”

“So she threatened you into giving up your post and freeing her lover by promising to be your vengeful ghost?”

“That is a very reductive way to put it,” he said. “But essentially correct.”

“I bet your master was not pleased with that outcome,” Galadriel said easily and instantly, Mairon’s face turned sour, his features hardening. “Forgive me, I did not mean to conjure up anything unpleasant.”

“Most of my past is unpleasant,” he said evenly, righting his features. “But that is the past. A dark past I hope will soon be forgotten and rectified.” He touched his hand to her belly. “And for her, there will only be light. – She will know her strength and we will guide her to use it well and wisely. I see no reason why she should not be just like Lúthien was: kind, strong of will and mind, and beloved by all who know her. I know I do already, and I have only touched her bright, golden little spirit yet, not even looked upon her.”

“Glóredhel, then, maybe?” Galadriel tried, prompted by him describing their daughter's aura aptly as bright and golden. It was another name suggestion of at least fifty she had already put before him. “It means–”

“Elf of the Golden Light,” he finished for her. “I know the meaning. But I still believe she needs a human name. We are lucky to have Bronwyn so fervently speaking for us but if we put an half-elven child forward as their heir with an elven name, I am sure we will invite chagrin from those who still struggle to accept us.”

“I have had a look in a couple of old books that Isildur has sent from the old Osgeendian library,” Galadriel told him, settling back onto her side, leaning on her elbow. “I remember a name that means ‘light’ in their ancient language.”

“Tell me,” he bid, getting comfortable much in the same way.

“Now, it is a very simple name,” she said.

“Simple is good.”

“Meira,” Galadriel finally said, it was really the only name from the selection of human ones that she had researched which touched something inside her.

“That sounds vaguely familiar.” He cocked his head with a smirk. “Meira, Mairon…”

Huh, Galadriel thought, maybe it was that.

“So, you approve?” She asked.

“If you approve, I approve.” He smiled and then tried the name in his mouth. “Princess Meira of the Southlands. Hm, sounds like it belongs, no?” He dipped low to her belly, putting a warm hand on it. “Are you Meira? Our Princess Meira?”

The child’s spirit glowed, reaching out to Mairon’s, abuzz with his attention.

“I think that is a yes,” Galadriel sighed and put her hands on his. “Hello, little Meira.”

Meira’s response tugged at her spirit in that taut sort of way that was not wholly comfortable, but she could bear it for the moment.

Her daughter had a name.

***

Galadriel took a long nap on Mairon’s chest, who was content rubbing circles into her back the whole time apparently, because she felt the touch when she drifted off and felt it again when she slowly came to. She stretched a little as she did, still lodged in his arms and lifted her head a little to put a small kiss on his beard. Mairon blinked into the sun, smiled, and kissed the tip of her nose in return. And that was really all it took.

Galadriel grinned, which he mirrored, and then she straightened up so she could kiss him fully, hoping she did not taste too much of sleep. He did not seem to mind, however, leaning in fully into her attentions and soon, gently put her on her back to lavish more kisses on her, his musky scent mixing in with the flowery perfumes and fresh water spray from the waterfall nearby. He kissed her everywhere, her mouth, her cheeks, her neck, and the next time she looked up, she realised he had managed to strip out of his clothes between all of it.

“Mairon,” she gasped, a little scandalised, “what if anyone sees us?”

“Then they’d see their king and queen ensuring the succession of their benevolent line of rulers,” he shrugged, fingering the hem of her dress up.

“We already did that,” she reminded him, the proof so large between them that he had to manoeuvre her around a bit to be able to align himself with her.

Mairon gestured around at the splendour of nature they found themselves in: “No one is here but us, the waterfall will catch all your sighs and moans that my mouth won’t. – And I love how you look in the light. I want to have you under the sun.”

How could she say no to that?! The other argument, which he did not need to tell her because she was already more than won over, was that where they lay, the grass grew almost to their waists, so lying down in it, they were shielded from anyone who did not have a bird’s eye view.

The Gods are always watching, Galadriel remembered faintly, but then thought to hell with them. Let them watch if it pleased them, what did she care?

She gave him her unspoken consent and he wasted not a moment to bury himself inside of her, shuddering as soon as he did. He was mindful as always, slow and gentle – and Galadriel enjoyed how her mind blanked out, zeroing in on only him and how he moved in her, how his hands felt on her sensitive skin.

He brought her expertly to new heights and stole most of her moans for himself as he had promised, only the last one he surrendered to the waterfall because he reached his peak at the same time as her and could not manage a proper kiss over his own broken cry.

He brought her down softly, indulgently, and set her dress to right gingerly before putting his own clothes back on, grinning all the way.

“We should come here more often,” he noted, very self-satisfied and she beheld him with some wonder.

“There is that other face,” he said, raising an eyebrow as he buttoned up his jerkin again, sitting up beside her. “The disbelieving one. What are you thinking?”

“I am thinking you are a natural at this.”

“At what?”

“At being human,” she said. “You eat, you drink, you sleep, you make love to me, you are to be a father. All of these things you should have abstained from, you took to them like a fish to water.”

“Only for you,” he told her. “I’ve been a human for centuries and I have never been tempted.”

“But you enjoy it?”

“How could I not?” He tilted his head at her, twisted a strand of her hair between his fingers. “There is a lot to be said about the pleasure these bodies can feel. Sometimes I wish you could share in it. It is different from the way it feels to be elven. Everything is…”

He paused, looking around as if searching for the rest of his sentence in the air around them.

“More,” he finally said.

“Explain,” she asked him, sitting up because now her back started to hurt from all the time spent lying on it and she wanted a better look at him.

He took a breath, thinking. “Do you know how you see so well – elven vision, the way it covers the longest distances and so many hues?” She nodded. “Human eyes see half as well… but the colours… even if they are less, they are so much more vivid. I have never seen colours like that before. – It’s much like this with everything else. I think because they only live for such a short time. Everything is more intense, every sensation heightened. Food is… so varied, so rich and moving. Music, too, moves you to the bone, even human music… hearing the sons of the One in this body would probably kill me. Laying with you, even touching you, especially now that we have Meira and I am half bound to this form, it’s so powerful I feel like I am at once flying and so firmly locked in place I can feel every inch of my skin because it burns for you.”

“Everything I ever felt in an elven body or what similar skins I wore before pales in comparison,” he continued. “It is as if humans were created to feel all that the immortals can in their eternities, in one finite lifetime. The highest highs and the lowest lows. – Even just a shred of it kept me in this body of a low man for so many years. And now… now that I feel everything even more and I get to experience this… life, how could I not hold onto it with all that I have?”

It was then that Galadriel understood that for Mairon, embracing the tie to this body was not so much a parting with possibility but a gain of joy. She would have expected that he would want to hold on to the maximum of his power in some way forever and it had not made sense to her when he professed time and time again that he would easily part with it for her. She had always thought him scheming in some way whenever he told her that. But now it fell into place: being bound to this body for eternity was not a step down for him, not if he could spend that eternity by her side.

This was how he would eventually become docile, neutral, maybe even benevolent, maybe even good. He would grow to love this life even more than he already did. She suddenly saw it so clearly, like foresight.

He would be more human than she could ever hope to be. She would feel for and with their subjects. He would love them like he loved her – if differently – and he would deeply desire, out of his own volition, to ensure their life in peace. He would strive for peace so he himself could enjoy the same thing. This was the way to tame an ever-hungry monster; feed it with joy and give it a home it cannot stand to lose. And Galadriel had done just that. Who would have thought it would be this easy in the end?

And there, in the grass, next to the rainbow-waterfall, she could see the design he had spoken of, feel the light of the One that had led her path right up to this point. Meira glowed along silently inside her, bright and affirming. This was it. This was real. This was everything she wanted.

They eventually returned home, and Galadriel did not feel a single step of it, as if she was walking on a cloud, her hand firmly in Mairon’s.

***

They arrived at sunset and walked the length of the city back to the White Tower, stopping here and there to speak to the citizens. They had made it to the square in front of their home when Bronwyn ran out to them and Galadriel was still so deeply content, she did not even hear the strain in the other woman’s voice.

“You have a visitor,” she announced. “Visitors, actually. They await an audience in the Great Hall.”

Mairon picked up on her tone earlier, and as if with foresight of his own, nodded and then bid Bronwyn to wait a moment.

She granted it and he used it to kiss Galadriel firmly, hotly, not caring that they were completely out in the open.

“Remember that I love you,” he told her as they broke apart and Galadriel just smiled, a little amused.

“I do,” she said easily. “I love you, too.”

Then they followed Bronwyn up the stairs to the palace.

Galadriel was surprised to find Elrond just inside, lingering outside of the Great Hall, looking somehow haunted. That was the first time the veneer of her high spirits cracked. Meira stirred again inside her, this time physically too, kicking her as if to shake her out of her blissful state to call her to attention.

“Mellon,” she greeted Elrond. Friend. “What brings you here?”

She fell into stride with him and Mairon who walked beside her, quicker-stepped to get to the Great Hall, and she could feel her husband's energy beside her grow apprehensive and impatient.

“It is hard to describe,” Elrond muttered and made some move to hold her back but she kept step with Mairon, falling into his urgency. “Something has happened that none of us still expected it could…”

“What is it?” She asked him, worried by the look on his face, yet not slowing down.

“If you could just wait a moment to let me explain,” Elrond tried but then Mairon already grabbed both handles of the grand portal to the hall and pulled it open.

Elrond said something else then, but Galadriel could not hear him anymore. She was frozen to the spot, her breath knocked out of her.

There she stood, on the threshold, pieces of grass still in her hair, her mouth red from kissing. A wedding band on her finger and a child large and heavy and unmistakable under her heart.

And before her, before them all, waited in the middle of the empty, vacuous, echoing hall – and stared at her in disbelief – was Celeborn, Prince of Doriath, the husband Galadriel had thought was dead.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO: A VOW UNDONE

The silence in the Great Hall was deafening. Galadriel sat on the edge of the platform where her and Mairon’s wooden thrones for their audiences stood, while Celeborn sat a few metres away, eying said thrones while she was grappling for words. She barely even remembered how they had gotten there. She was still in shock.

When she had first seen him, she had nearly fainted, reached a hand out to steady herself against Mairon’s arm, who had looked at her, frowning, but held her up. Then she had turned to Elrond, who had made a face like he wanted to remind her that he had wished to prepare her for the sight of Celeborn. How was he there? How was this all possible?

Dimly, she had recalled that she knew this. That she should not be surprised, that this, or something like this, was how it happened, but she pushed the thought aside. The most important thing was how she was going to deal with it now that it was her reality. How she would deal with her husband back from the dead when she had married another.

She could not recall how, but somehow she had managed to ask the king and Elrond for a moment of privacy, and then was left alone with Celeborn and had acted as if through a thick haze.

She had not touched him, only walked a little closer, as if he would disappear again if she spooked him. He had not changed much since she had seen him last… a few lines had deepened on his face, his cheeks were slightly more haggard, but apart from this, the man in that empty hall with her was the same as when she had seen him last.

Finally, she glanced back from the two chairs to her, his face speaking of the same trouble she faced. What did one say in a moment such as this? Maybe it was best to start at the beginning.

“What happened to you?” She rasped, her voice brittle from misuse and the boulder she had in her throat. “We believed you dead.”

“I believed so myself for a while,” he answered after a moment and she had to swallow back an unbidden, tearless sob.

His voice! She had forgotten his voice – and now that she heard it, it was hard to marry it with what she had expected. She thought it would be lower, more aged. Now everything about him seemed so very young.

He was still the way he had been when she had fallen for him. When she had been wild and vengeful and unwilling to return with the rest of her kin to Valinor and leave the promise of Middle Earth behind – and the hunt for Sauron. Back then, he had shared her ambition to carve out a realm for themselves, a place to rule and this had drawn her to him. Though she had quickly learned that there had been a stark difference between the two of them.

For Galadriel wanted to rid the land of Sauron and his shadow so she could see what pick of the world she wanted for herself and go on adventures finding it, where Celeborn was content to accept the first parcel of land that Gil-galad pawned off to them as a wedding gift – Halindon, it had wound up being called – and just looked for a place to burrow himself in. She wanted a sprawling kingdom. He wanted a cozy home. She wanted to know all the creatures great and small Middle Earth had to offer, he preferred their kind and hated the dwarves beyond any reason to boot.

Still, for what they had back then, she had been glad for him. She found him attractive and he was the first to stir desire in her. She had decided that this was worth giving away her hand in marriage. Love would follow, she had believed, and in a way it had. Easy companionship at least. And even though she went out to hunt and to travel by herself, being away from him for a hundred years straight on more than one occasion, she had always been content to return to his side. She was fire, he was a babbling brook that she could rest at until the draw to more became unbearable or another hint of Sauron’s whereabouts had been unearthed.

She almost had to chuckle then, in a decidedly unfunny way, looking at him gaze off into the hall, because in a sense, Sauron had always been a part of their marriage. Celeborn would never find out why this was so deeply ironic now, though.

“How did you survive?” She asked him then, needing more information to put a timeline to things to make sense of what was happening. “And where?”

“Deep, deep, in a dungeon in the bowels of a mountain far North,” he replied and his voice sounded as grave as said dungeon must have felt. “Survived on a spring water trickle down my cell walls – and rats. How I endured it… well, I had a home to return to.” He turned his head half to her. “Or so I thought.”

Galadriel could only keep from drawing in an audible breath at the accusation in his voice by a hair but she was glad she did. She could not address his rightful anger and confusion yet, not before she knew the whole of what had happened to him while she was living her own life and moving on from him.

“How did you escape?” She asked thusly, instead of reacting to his telling remark.

Celeborn sighed, undoubtedly noting her diversion, but answered her nonetheless. “The orcs who had guarded me left… and left me with an open gate to my prison.”

“What?” Galadriel heard herself gasp. “Why?”

“Because I had shared my dwelling with them for many centuries,” Celeborn said as easily as she figured he could have regarding the grim matter. “I assume they grew accustomed to me.”

“I do not understand,” she said helplessly, earnestly. “Any of it.”

“Adar,” he said merely, looked back at her and then elaborated. “Elrond told me of your defeat of him. After Sauron disappeared, killed by him – or at least him and his children believed it so – Adar sought to keep me where I was, so as to use me as leverage against our kind when the time came. Then, I gather after he died and your King Halbrand gave his orcs their own home so very generously–” The tone of disparagement at her husband’s decision palpable and thick in his voice. “–the ones still remaining in the old Northern stronghold, where I was slowly succumbing to madness, followed the calls of their brethren.”

He took a deep breath and cast his eyes at the far side of the hall again. “But way before Adar had decided to keep me in the chains his old master had put me in, his children, the ones that had displeased Sauron in their day, had languished in the same chains as me. When they left for their new mountain, they decided to let me keep my life, you might say out of a sentimentality of sorts – or leave me to fend for it by myself at least.”

Galadriel would never have been able to deem such a thing fathomable, but now she had lived with orcs at her back for half a decade and she had to begrudgingly accept that the creatures were not bereft of better sentiments, of making decisions out of reason, even kindness and affection. So she believed what he told her without question.

“After, I fought my way back to Lindon,” he continued. “Though I was slow, and confused. I had forgotten most of myself, you see. Half a year ago, I nearly perished – but I was found by two travelling wizards, who nursed me back to health, took me along with them on their trail through Middle Earth and I remembered why I had stayed alive. Why I had refused to die. Whom I had to return to.”

That was another remark meant to cut her, to make her put words to what had led not him to where they sat, but her. She would not. Not yet. She had to know one other thing first.

“Mithrandir… and Saruman,” she said and he nodded grimly, not because of the mention of their names but because she had dodged his unspoken allegation yet again. “And Sauron? Did he… was he the one who captured you? Put you in that dungeon?”

“That was Morgoth, or one of his Uruk generals,” Celebron replied, as patient as she had always known him, and as wise. “Sauron came after. Filled the other cells with Adar’s most unruly children and then plucked them out again, one by one from their cages, to experiment on them, never to return.”

Galadriel shivered with the mention of her lover’s dark past. It made more sense now why he had done it all, but the methods he had used for those ends were still scary and worrisome, even if they had long since been abandoned. She recalled what Adar had told her, ages ago in that barn further south where they had held him so briefly. About Sauron’s aim in those mountains in the far North.

“Sauron devoted himself to healing Middle Earth,” Adar had told her, “bringing its ruined lands together in perfect order. He sought to craft power not of flesh but over flesh, power of the unseen world. But try as he might, something was missing. A shadow of dark knowledge that kept itself hidden even from him, no matter how much blood he spilled in its pursuit.”

Galadriel did not know if Mairon had found that missing piece truly within their own union, as he claimed he had, but she at least knew he had abandoned the search. But in those days, with Morgoth’s claw marks still around his throat, he must have believed he could bring healing and order through subjugation and that subjugation through… fear or force.

Now, she knew he had achieved the same thing through love and the promise of a peaceful future, but now was now and then had been then. Sauron had not known what Mairon would come to discover. And Celeborn had only witnessed it all from far below, watching fellow prisoners disappear to endure the One knew what, at the hands of their captor.

“Until Adar had enough,” Celeborn said and brought Galadriel back to the present. “This was what news eventually made it down to the caves at least.” He paused, breathing in and out, as if the next sentence cost him. “Elrond tells me you spent all that time I was held there scouring Middle Earth for Sauron. Would that you had made it North looking for him, you may have found me.”

I was there, she thought with a start, suddenly remembering, putting the pieces together. In the North! In Forodwaith! When she found Sauron’s neglected smithy, fought the beastly troll and her company mutinied against her!

I was there! Where Sauron tried to find that dark, mystifying knowledge, she thought, where Adar and his orcs were hiding… and keeping guard over Celeborn.

“Would that you had devoted just a bit of that time and effort to look for me, as well,” Celeborn added, levying a thinly veiled arraignment at her for the third time – and this one she could not just abide.

“I did look for you,” she told him because it was the truth. “For a long time. – But then I had to accept that you were dead.”

“Except I am not,” he said, serious as a grave. “I am here. And I am your husband. – How are we to salvage this?”

Finally, he turned his head to her again so she did the same.

“What do you mean?” She asked, somewhat unnecessarily because she was aware what he would say next.

“This,” he said and pointed to the reforged Nenya still on her finger, her wedding band. “This arrangement might have been prudent for the time being, but you cannot mean to continue this farce. Queen of the Southlands? Surely we do not need to bind the mortals quite so tightly to us.” He spoke easily enough but she could tell there was an edge to it. A worry as well as a wish to will his words into existence no matter how she felt about them. “Do not worry about the child, I am prepared to love her as my own.”

Invoking her child had been the very worst path to take, but he, for all his wisdom, was not wise enough to understand this. He was not a mother. He was not a mother who had created the child he spoke of with a father whom she loved beyond the bounds of the universe.

She said nothing, instead let the silence speak for her as she held his gaze until the very last moment and then had to lower it as he understood what it meant. That she would not raise her child with him, that Meira would know only one father: the King of the Southlands. That Galadriel herself would remain his Queen and that this had been decided from the beginning. That there was not even a question.

“I see,” Celeborn said eventually, sounding suddenly empty – but still calm and stable, as he always had been. “Is this your wish then? To not return to me?”

Galadriel knew there must have been a tempest in him, for how could it be anything else? He had survived great turmoil and isolation for years and years, forgotten himself, endured just for the vague promise of that home he had built for them.

Then he had fought himself back to the surface of the earth and back to his own memories and now she told him that he had waited and suffered and endured for nothing. At least not for her.

His bitter laugh cut through the silence, a moment of weakness for him no doubt, which he quickly reigned in, talking softly when he did next: “You know, Elrond hinted that this might happen. He said you harboured true, tender feelings for that halfling.”

“He is not–” Galadriel caught herself, peeved at his choice of words. “He is my husband. And Elrond should have told you that I married him for love.”

“Elves do not love twice,” Celeborn declared – and it was meant to be a dagger for her, condemning what he had earlier called a farce.

It wound up piercing him, though, when she just looked up at him, her features hardening into a mix of guilt and resolve. Her eyes spoke, they must have. He understood.

No, they do not.

Elves did not love twice – and Galadriel hadn’t either. She had truly only loved once, did so still. And she loved her husband. She loved Mairon. King Halbrand. Which meant that she had never loved Celeborn. And it seemed they, Celeborn and her, were only fully becoming aware of this now. She had never really loved him. Not truly. Not enough. And she would never choose him over the other. Over the one.

Suddenly, as if Celeborn could not stand to look at her another second in the certainty of this shared realisation, he stood up, his robes swooshing on the floor, stirring up flecks of dust that danced in the air, free and silver like they once had, back when they had first met – and he put his own wedding ring down onto the steps, iron clinking on marble.

“Then I release you from your vows to me,” he said, fixing a spot somewhere above her head. “I only wish we could have had more time together.”

The thought struck Galadriel as odd for some reason, like she had had her fill of him for millenia. But she remembered that they had not been married long before he had gone to war. A couple hundred years, not a lot of time really, not for someone who lived forever.

He turned around and started to walk away but her growing, gnawing guilt propelled her upwards. She could not let him leave like this.

“Celeborn!” She cried out, ran after him and caught him in a hug which he suffered stiffly and then finally pulled back.

Tears glistened in his beautiful blue eyes but he refused to let them fall.

“I am sorry,” she whispered, nearly crying herself. “I do not wish to hurt you. I am so, so glad that you are alive. – But I had no control. Mai–” She caught herself, cursing how frazzled the whole ordeal had made her, how it unsettled her control. “My husband, him and I… we were brought together by something bigger. Bigger than both of us, all three of us, really. I know it won’t make sense right now but I am still your friend. And I very much desire to see you happy.”

Now it was Celeborn’s turn to be silent. The way he looked down at her told her that he would probably have sobbed or screamed had he opened his mouth, and would not be able to stop either, so it was probably for the best. Instead he nodded, thin-lipped, looked into her eyes one last time and then turned his gaze away.

“I wish you the best,” he said tightly after another long moment. “And a blessed birth.”

With that, he turned around and left her in the middle of the hall, looking after him with her heart torn into bits by her shame.

She watched him let himself out and cursed her good vision for being able to see the pitiful way Elrond looked upon Celeborn and next the way her first husband must have looked at her current one – either foul or mournful enough to make even Mairon lower his head in remorse.

Then her spirits lifted marginally when Elrond led the other elf away for the moment and Mairon made his way back to her – but only briefly. For then the whole weight of Celeborn’s words regarding his time in the Northern mountain dungeons finally sank in and that feeling of respite faded as swiftly as it had come on.

Mairon reached her worriedly, his forehead in wrinkles, but he did not seem aware of the storm brewing inside of her.

“Are you alright?” He asked her tenderly.

“Tell me you did not know that you had my husband in your dungeons in the Forodwaith mountains,” she said and put some distance between them, because this, she had to know before she could accept any comfort from him.

Mairon winced, only a little, but she knew his face enough to see it clear as day. “I had an inkling. I honestly never bothered to learn his name… when I came North I was… busy with other things–”

“So I have heard,” she interjected with some judgement in her voice.

“–but when you mentioned him, I could not say that it had not been him down there.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” She hissed and then Mairon flicked his wrist and the heavy double doors at the end of the hall flew shut to shield their conversation from passers-by. “Why did you not tell me?!”

“Because I, like you, thought the prisoner was likely dead,” he said, putting his hands up in surrender. “What good would it have done? You must know that when I had to leave Forodwaith, I was nothing but an untethered spirit that could not remain there – and it was centuries ago. I had no idea what had become of that one elven prisoner in the dungeon and I frankly did not care. Then, when you told me about him, yes, I suspected that maybe, they could be one and the same, but why tell you and cause you pain?”

“Or have me go look for him?” She challenged, because she knew him so well that this was most likely a part of his decision-making.

“That too,” he replied. At least he did not bother lying to her anymore.

She turned her face away from him and sighed angrily. Meira kicked her as if to tell her to cease being angry at him, the little traitor. She was not even born yet and she already favoured her father. Mairon walked around her, back into her line of view, and took her hands into his. They were clammy, speaking of his own true worries. He was terrified to lose her to this – had maybe even spent the entirety of her talk with Celeborn pacing outside the hall, afraid she would not choose him.

“I apologise,” he said sincerely, and she thought she could hear relief in his voice still. “I could have handled this better.”

“Is this why you kissed me before we came inside?” She asked. “And told me to remember that you loved me? Because you knew he might come back for me one day?”

“Yes and no,” he replied, making a bit of a face as if considering leaving it at that, but then obviously decided to elaborate. “Unlike you, your not-so-late-husband does not guard his mind well. And it is turmoiled enough to hear it from a mile away. I knew who awaited us in here.”

Galadriel took his word for it, as she made no effort to seek that form of punishment out for herself. Mairon was the one between them who enjoyed being disciplined.

“Leave him his privacy,” she told him on top of that. “He has been through enough. And I do not wish for him to find him lurking around his consciousness. He thinks you are half-elven like the rest of Middle Earth, and we should make very sure it stays that way.”

She meant it. Celeborn had borne the rejection as well as any person could have, with the same grace and calm she had always admired so about him – but she could not say what he would do, if he learned of Halbrand’s true identity. She shuddered just imagining it.

No… that was something she had to keep from him forever. How she would do that, she was not sure yet – but there had to be a way. If anything, this was another problem for the Galadriel of the future.

“What are you pondering?” Mairon asked her, reading her face like a book.

“Nothing important,” she told him. “I have to talk to Elrond. I am sure he has a piece of his mind to give me.”

“Matter of fact he is waiting with it outside the doors,” Mairon informed her, scrunching up his eyebrows and then pinching the bridge of his nose. “His mind is also very loud today.”

Galadriel sighed, then she nodded and braved the way back to the door. As her husband had suggested, Elrond was there awaiting her arrival.

“Where is Celeborn?” She asked him, a bit worried.

“He went to take a stroll through the city,” her best friend replied. “He wished to clear his head.”

“Probably best to,” chimed in Mairon and both Galadriel’s and Elrond’s looks in response told him that his opinions on the matter were not required.

He put up his hands again in that one of his favourite gestures of mock-surrender and then inclined his head to their elven guests.

“I will leave you to discuss among the two of you,” he declared. “I will be in the tower if you have need of me.” Then he bowed to the elven king. “High King Elrond.”

“King Halbrand.”

“Anon,” Mairon said. “Or until we meet next.”

He did as he had promised and left them there, making a beeline for the lift to give them the widest berth of privacy he could – considering he could still flit in and out of Elrond’s mind if he so pleased, but something told Galadriel that he would not.

Galadriel felt stuffy and restrained in the foyer of the White Tower and asked Elrond to get some air, which he gladly accepted. Once outside, they stood for a long while on the top of the palace steps, watching the busy dealings on the market set up on the town’s square at the tower’s foot. The last deals of the day were made at some stalls while the others were already being closed down for the night as the last rays of sunshine hit them.

“Galador is splendid,” he told her after a while of this.

“Thank you. Surprisingly it is the building guild of the orcs which comes at night who raised up most of these structures.” She pointed at the stone houses and palais that had emerged, surrounding the square – houses of merchants and shop-keepers. “Who would have guessed that these creatures would thrive in peace and with a purpose other than killing?”

“It is a marvel,” Elrond agreed toneless.

“You do not trust them,” she stated. It was not a question.

“I do not have to,” he said easily, telling her what she had understood years ago. “They love their king for letting them live and they fear their Queen for her strength. If they step so much as a toe out of line they know you will eviscerate them. So, I am willing to give them a chance… see how they fare in these times of peace ahead of us.”

They fell silent again then, the proverbial elephant sitting between them still unaddressed.

“Thank you for wanting to warn me,” Galadriel finally said, giving that elephant a soft nudge. “And for bringing Celeborn here. It was good of you.”

“I had a feeling it would end in heartbreak, though.” He sighed. “In his, to be precise.”

“He told me as much when we spoke,” Galadriel huffed, a small conspiratory smile on her lips, attempting to lift the mood a bit.

Elrond sighed again, frowning. “I will not lie and tell you that I fully understand why you chose this life, why you chose your husband… but I know that once you have made up your mind it is made up and everyone would be a fool to stand in your way.”

“Are you calling me stubborn?!”

“Are you denying that you are?” Elrond retorted and she had to give that to him – but at least she had made him smile. “You are the most stubborn being to ever wander this Middle Earth. Perhaps Celeborn dodged a terribly strenuous fate that now instead awaits your Southern king.”

“And who knows, perhaps Celeborn will find another, less stubborn love for himself as well. One more suited to him,” Galadriel tried, more to appease herself than Elrond, and in any case, appeasing him was not what her words did.

He frowned at her once more, an air of condemnation about his tone: “I think you have done enough to upset the Valar’s will with your second marriage, best not to tempt them by hoping for another.”

“The Valar do not care,” she said, rather certainly. “They have turned their eyes from Middle Earth long ago. Plus, second marriages run in my family.”

“One second marriage,” Elrond reminded her sternly of her grandfather’s big scandal. “And your late grandmother had died, if you recall. Celeborn is still alive. And suffering.”

“I know,” she said, equally as stern because she did not appreciate his judgement. “I know you cannot understand it yet, but you will someday. My choice of Halbrand is more important than you know. I found him for a reason. I love him for a reason.”

She decided then and there that one day, she would tell Elrond the whole truth. Not yet, not for a long time, but she knew, once she would lay it all out before him, he would see it made perfect sense. He would understand her. She would give it a couple of centuries yet and she was sure by then, her results would also speak for themselves.

She was glad that for the moment though, Elrond did not press her on her cryptic words. He was probably too tired to start another argument and she could not blame him.

“Will you stay for dinner?” She asked stupidly, more to be polite and to have something to say because she knew he would decline.

“I think it best if we make for Lindon as soon as the horses have been readied,” he told her glumly and then relented a bit, giving her a small smile. “It was good to see you, even despite all of this ugliness.”

“It was good to see you too,” she said, electing to let the comment of ugliness slide. “Take care of Celeborn for me, yes? Keep him occupied, give him some purpose. Maybe return Halindon back to his reign? He so loved it there.”

“Yes, I believe I might.” Elrond nodded. “He was never one for adventure, was he?”

Galadriel chuckled a bit, despite herself, feeling fondly for Celeborn still, and grieving a little for the friend that she had lost in her first husband. “He really was not. – And he deserves some peace after what he has been through.”

Elrond nodded once more and she understood it as the farewell it was meant as. Somehow she knew she would not hear from him for a while yet. Probably not until Meira was born.

“Have a blessed birth,” he told her, implying as much himself, then bent down to kiss her forehead. “And give my regards to your husband. I won’t take the sordid lift up today, I do not trust that contraption.”

Galadriel huffed a little laugh and then she let Elrond go, watching him until he disappeared into the stables around the side left of the tower.

She turned her face to the sunshine one more time and watched until the very last ray of sun disappeared as the sun dropped beyond the horizon, leaving her city in a faint purple glow. Then she took a deep breath of the early night air and returned to her husband.

***

An hour later, when it was too dark for Mairon’s human eyes to see, she stood on the balcony and watched as Elrond and Celeborn on their majestic steeds rode along the main street, out of the city, and followed their trail longer still, as they chased each other down the great road towards Osgiliath. It was the quickest way through the mountains to the West.

Behind her, Mairon nestled his nose into her hair and stroked up and down her belly. Meira had kept her own little spirit tempered all evening, as if she understood that her mother needed some of her patience and grace for herself – and it was as if Mairon’s caresses were the reward their daughter now eagerly glowed for in appreciation.

“I have no idea what I did to deserve you two,” her husband muttered into her hair and pulled her tighter to his frame. “What made you choose me? I was half-convinced you would leave me today. – Did you hesitate?”

“Not for a moment,” she told him. “For better or for worse, remember?”

She called back to one of the traditionally Southorn vows they had made to each other on the steps of their palace, felt him smile against her ear before he lifted his head and kissed her cheek.

“But truly,” he remained, “how do I deserve this, after everything?”

“I do not know if you do,” she said, only half-kidding. “But I do.”

As if he could not help himself, Mairon laughed, the motion rocking her and she could not fight joining in, if softer, the events of the day still heavy in her bones.

“That you do,” he said, once he could talk again. “Happiness, I hope it is you speak of.”

“Unfathomable happiness,” she echoed one of their earlier nights together, and twisted her neck so she could kiss him on the lips.

He responded in kind, plucking one hand off of her belly to put it on her cheek and jaw, drawing her closer yet.

“Just promise me one thing,” he asked of her when they came up for air. “I know those next last few months of the pregnancy will be draining. Please do not take on more gloom than you have to, regarding Celeborn. Put that blame on me, and let me carry that for you.”

“If I can, I will,” Galadriel promised – and she tried.

***

In the following months, she really did try to keep from worrying or fretting or drowning in shame about how she had broken Celeborn’s heart and for the most part, it worked. At least in her waking moments. Mostly because Meira’s growing space constrainment and boredom in the womb made for one unhappy little spirit her mother had to contend with. But sometimes at night, she would wake up from terrible dreams, picturing Celeborn’s twisted, agonised face, screaming at her in rage and pain and endless, utter disappointment.

And sometimes with a hatred so foul and ravaging, he took on the form of Sauron at his worst and most violent moments – where his veins had darkened so much they made a black mask around his eyes, with obsidian slits for irises. Galadriel would yelp, shoot up in bed in terror and remind herself that she was mixing up her husbands in her mind, that Celeborn was kind and wise and steady and that he would be fine. And that Sauron was Mairon, quietened like Mount Doom and domesticated like the orcs, and beside her – always waking up with her to calm her down again most sweetly.

It was her self-loathing, more than anything that caused these dreams, but that she could only quell by telling herself over and over again that she had made the right decision. For her and for Celeborn. They were of a different past, a distant past, and the future was Mairon – and Meira.

Meira on her part, otherwise unbothered by her mother’s turmoiled nights for that was when the child slept, was herself occupied by her will to be free of her confinement.

***

Really, it should not have come as a surprise that very early on in Galadriel’s second to last month of pregnancy, not even Mairon’s begging and singing calming melodies to her belly, trying to coax his daughter into reasonableness, could keep Meira’s bright, golden spirit settled. She wanted out – and she would not suffer through another two months being kept from the world.

It was the middle of the night on the second eve of her eleventh month in existence when the Princess of the Southlands finally had enough and decided she was done growing inside her mother. Galadriel winced and once more shot up in bed, though this time not from a dream, but from a shooting pain low in her abdomen.

“What, what is it?” Mairon’s voice was brittle from sleep and his eyes blaring, but he was wide awake. “Another nightmare?”

“No,” Galadriel bit out and tried to breathe through the pain. “Not a nightmare. – Your daughter, she wants… out.”

“Our daughter,” he corrected her reflexively before the full weight of the news had even sunk in.

“Ahhhhrghh, CURSED!” Galadriel yelped, pushed him off her and then yanked him back to her side the next moment, digging her fingernails into his hand; the agony was sudden, searing and seemed unending. “NO! With that pain, she’s yours. – OW! – Yo- yours alone, you foul creature! This is all your fault!”

Mairon did not get to protest again, for then his wife’s scream shook the very tower they lived in and drowned out any sound he could have hoped to make.

The Queen of the Southlands was in labour.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE: PRINCESS MEIRA

The city’s best healers and a midwife were called to Galadriel’s side and none of them left until the feat was done. The king was supposed to wait outside of the chamber, as was customary in royal human houses – but Mairon could not be kept away. He held Galadriel’s hand through the entire ordeal.

For her, the birth was excruciating, more spiritually than physically, though as far as the rest of the pregnancy had progressed, this was the most uncomfortable her body had been yet. She was glad that it only lasted a couple of hours. Swete’s labour with Gala had taken nearly two days – and Galadriel knew this was nothing out of the ordinary for human women. She shuddered to think it, and was glad that despite not being full-term, Meira was sturdy and healthy and could not be kept from earth too long.

The little girl came with the light of morning, a bright summer day as golden as her spirit, and as loud as both of their parents could be when they were supremely angry. Galadriel barely registered at first that it was done. The only thing she originally noted was that the strain and pain lessened from her body. Then, even more freeing, she realised she had her mind back to herself, and only then did she really understand what had happened.

She watched the midwife lift the squirming babe from between her legs, watched her cut the umbilical cord, give the baby a small slap on the thigh and then the child was screaming from the top of her little lungs.

Mairon let out a startled sob next to her and only let go of his wife’s hand to take the child from the midwife and carry her over to Galadriel. He put Meira on her chest and climbed into bed with them both. Meira was a little smaller than she should have been – but strong nonetheless, and she looked up at her mother with vibrant eyes and immediately ceased to cry. The babe tilted its head, reminding Galadriel startlingly of Mairon when he was being inquisitive – or insolent – and Galadriel turned her head to him to catch his reaction when he would undoubtedly observe the same thing.

Mairon was breathless, looking at the child, then looking back at Galadriel. Like he could not believe it. Reverently, gingerly, he touched their daughters hair, it was wet and had already grown thick and dark on her head. One of the healers put a blanket over the baby and Mairon used it to wipe off the smear of blood and white stuff on her face while Meira turned her gaze on her father. He was crying soundlessly now, silent, happy tears running down his cheeks.

“She is the most beautiful thing I have ever helped create,” he said and Galadriel was the only other being in the room who knew what high praise this was, how wondrous it must have been for him to understand, considering that he had been made for the single purpose of creating beautiful things.

Galadriel wished she could have drunk in the whole scene even more; her husband’s joy, her own relief. And most of all Meira. Beautiful, lovely, perfect Meira, safe and sound and real in her arms. But then the healers did what they were there to do, asked the King to bring the babe to be examined and got to work tending to Galadriel and dressing her birth-torn flesh.

Galadriel would then go on to sleep for nearly an hour before she finally had uninterrupted time alone with her husband and daughter – and she was glad to find that Mairon was in no hurry at all to cut their family time short.

***

Hours later, after King Halbrand had informed the citizens of the birth and attended to the business of the day, he returned to the room with a giddy spring in his step. Galadriel had a hard time looking away from Meira, sleeping in her arms.

“I have been staring at her for hours,” she told him when he joined her in bed and kissed her first and then the baby’s head.

“Can you feel her?” Mairon asked. “Even in sleep she has such… an energy.”

“She will be willful,” prophesied Galadriel, smoothing the short hairs out of her daughter’s forehead. “And strong. We would do best to savour every moment that she sleeps.”

Mairon straightened and then sat up to move her into his arms, putting his chin onto the top of her head.

“I think you worry too much,” her husband decided easily. “Look at her, how much trouble can something so perfect be?”

***

The answer, of course, like Galadriel had expected, was a lot. After the first week, which both Galadriel and Meira spent mostly sleeping and healing from the birth, as soon as Galadriel got back onto her two full feet, Meira attempted to do the same.

Galadriel had some trouble explaining to her mortal attendees – her Ladies in Waiting, the rest of the court – that Meira was not a demon spawn. Because within the first couple months alive, her teeth came in, she skipped crawling entirely in favour of taking her first steps and grew an inch almost every day. They did not know this was normal for elven babies – they also did not know that Meira, being half Maia, was faster yet in her development than even those children.

As for the king, the months of teething rattled him greatly. Galadriel was somehow more calm through it all, as if she had been through this before, in an abstract sense. But Mairon struggled. One, because now he needed at least some sleep which subsequently evaded him and two, because Meira’s tortured little yelps and the incessant screaming was near unbearable to him.

“Why can’t I do anything?” He asked Galadriel once, in the middle of the night when Meira had stopped crying just long enough to nurse – made more and more uncomfortable for Galadriel by every new tooth that came in – and her husband was nearly in tears himself. “She suffers. She barely knows what is happening to her and I cannot help!”

“She knows what is happening,” Galadriel told him and really, they were both aware.

Though Meira could not yet speak – she would need at least her two front teeth for that – her mind was awake and the child understood that some strife was necessary to advance.

“But can I not lift the pain?” Mairon tried, an umpteenth attempt, and Galadriel shook her head, also not for the first time.

“Sometimes pain is important to mark change,” she reminded him. “These growing pains even moreso.”

He did not like this but he relented eventually, allowing her the last word because she was Meira’s mother and, because he had never had one, he deferred to her judgement. He did so with most things, including Galadriel refusing to go into the confinement which was customary for human royalty. She did not think much of the practice and she had no interest in letting Mairon lead the kingdom by himself for the year she was expected to retreat from court.

So he argued that since she was not a human, she was not beholden to this tradition, and dared any of their subjects to raise doubts about Galadriel being back to holding audiences and sitting – nursing Meira – at the council table within a month. No one did, of course. They were beloved, King Halbrand and his queen, and they had just given them an heir – nobody would dare stand against them.

The funny thing was that within the first couple of months of Galadriel being a mother and a queen, the next few women to have children at court would ask for leave to cut their own confinement short. Galadriel then aptly decided that everyone should have the choice to retreat or not, just as they pleased, and so she soon had the women’s full support, which quelled whatever misgivings their husbands might have had in turn. If Mairon had his own doubts about how she conducted herself, he knew better than to challenge her – after all, he did not behave in a way that human kings were expected to with their children either.

He not only doted on Meira, he insisted on spending as much time as possible with the babe. Whenever Galadriel was not nursing her, he put her on his lap, letting her squirm around on him as she attempted to master movement. It did not matter if he was holding audiences or was riding the length of Galador, attending to their duty to be seen, the three of them did everything together. And when they were alone, Mairon did what he could to teach Meira everything she incessantly demanded to learn.

He had built her a crib with his own two hands, welded it out of silver and steel, and made toys for her, one more beautiful than the other. Once she moved into her own bedroom one story beneath the belvedere, Mairon stuffed the whole room with more and more trinkets and playthings. He would spend hours on end with her inside that room, pretending to be a troll or a sea monster to her warrior princess or pirate, with the same dedication he had once used to amass power. It was almost bewildering to see a creature such as Sauron be at last entirely transformed by the love for his daughter. It was madness to think he had fathered a child in the first place. But he took to it like a fish to water.

It was into his open arms that Meira took her first steps and it was him who henceforth chased after her to make sure she did not climb onto the balcony balustrade or get herself into any other mortal danger. Suffice it to say, this was about the equivalent in terms of effort as governing a kingdom. Especially when she did not only run circles around him but at five months of age, started to talk. That was when Mairon really had his hands full.

The child was bright as summer, with a keen eye for observations big and small. In the beginning she had no filter but soon learned what was appropriate to say where – always less and simpler when humans were around – and very soon, what had been evident in her spirit before, made itself known through her words: She was her father’s child in nearly every way. Not only did she look a lot like him – shared the same nose and eyes, her hair grew in fast, curly and chestnut-brown – her countenance was much like his.

She had big ambitions, driven by perfectionism, knew exactly what she wanted and found ways to get it. She was also funny, even deadpan, much like Mairon was. What she had inherited of Galadriel was the stubbornness, warring with what inside her that echoed Mairon’s patience for the long game. Her ears of course, were elven too, and they stuck out adorably from under her mess of curls at any given time, still too large for her little head. But even though Galadriel had grown her under her heart, looking at Mairon parenting the girl, she knew Meira and him had a connection that was its own beast entirely.

Half of his spirit was tied to this child and whenever she gazed upon Meira, she knew a piece of him gazed back at her. Watching the two of them together when neither knew she was, though, quickly became one of her favourite past times.

***

Once, at night, when Meira had asked to be tucked in by her father – knowing that her mother was more rigid with her bedtime – Galadriel hid behind the ajar door of Meira’s bedchamber and peeked into the candle-lit room. She was glad for her good ears, because she could hear every last word as if she was sitting right beside them.

“Time for bed now, sparrow,” Mairon said, using a new nickname Meira had given herself once out on a forest walk, fascinated with the little birds, and the King of the Southlands gestured at his daughter to get into her crib.

“No,” the child replied easily, her voice high and clear as a bell – she had the look of a three year old child but sounded like one of ten.

“Yes,” her father insisted mildly.

“But I am not tired yet,” she argued.

“I did not say you had to sleep, I said you have to go to bed,” he bargained, ever the politician.

“What else am I supposed to do in bed?” Meira asked him as if he was a bit slow.

“You can dream up worlds for instance,” offered Mairon and sat down on her bed, opening his arms to her in an invitation to climb onto his lap. “I used to do that a lot when I was younger and rested.”

“What kind of worlds?” Meira sounded at once really intrigued and she followed his cue, stumbling a little clumsily over to him – she always wanted to run and was inconvenienced by her short, stubby legs.

“All kinds.” Mairon snatched her from the floor, lifted her up onto his thigh and gestured in front of her face, illustrating his words playfully. “Big towns made of large stones, a forest with beautiful treehouses, carved into the woods, a city in the clouds, light as air, a sprawling underwater kingdom…”

“Were you the king of that kingdom? Like you are now?” She asked him excitedly. “Of all the worlds? When you dreamed them? Because I would like to be in charge of my worlds!”

“I was,” he said and then dropped his voice to a stage-whisper, knowing full well that Galadriel was right outside the door, because she always was, and because he had seen her earlier while Meira had still been playing with her toys and had winked at her. “But do not tell your mother.”

“Why?” Meira asked. “Surely she was the queen of them all when you dreamed them?”

“Well, I have been dreaming for a while,” Mairon told her. “But as soon as I knew your mother, yes, she was always the queen.”

Galadriel sighed, trying to be quiet about it, because Meira’s ears were just as good, if not better, than hers.

“Did you dream me up?” Galadriel heard her daughter say next.

“You know, I think I did,” Mairon mused. “I didn’t expect you, but I guess I always wanted you. Or something like you, at least.”

“Like another child? Or something else?” Meira sounded as if she half expected her father to tell her he had wanted some woodland creature instead, or a cat.

“No, you are just right,” he reassured her quickly and clarified: “I think I always wanted something that I made that was perfect. And your mother and I made you.”

“So, I am perfect?” Meira was elated.

“Very much so.”

“And you love me a lot?”

“I love you more than the whole world,” he affirmed willingly – and Galadriel grinned in her hideout because she knew what path Meira had just decided on.

“Then why would you make me sad and send me to bed?” The child asked with completely put-on innocence. “If I am perfect, would I not know when it was best for me to retire and rest better than you?”

Galadriel had a hard time keeping from giggling and she leaned forward a little bit to catch more of Mairon’s stunned reaction to his daughter's argumentative feat, which took him a moment to recover from. She was truly his child.

“You are too smart for your own good, little sparrow,” he attested her when he could speak again, not without a hint of pride.

“No, I am perfect,” Meira corrected him. “You said so.”

“Yes, you are. But even perfect princesses need their rest and sometimes fathers know better,” he told her. “Go on, get ready for bed. I will tuck you in and then we can dream up a world together. Deal?”

“Deal,” Meira decided, and then Galadriel left to give them a bit of true alone-time.

Mairon joined her in bed a little later, his eyes alight. “She is smart as a whip, that one.”

“I told you she would be willful,” Galadriel said, turning around to him.

“She is,” he affirmed, grinning. “In the very best way.”

***

During Meira’s first year on Middle Earth, Galadriel was sometimes worried, because her and Mairon had such a bond, that Meira did not need her as much, especially after she had finished nursing and the child ate solid food. Galadriel thought her daughter might not depend on her as much and the thought saddened her. But Meira, sweet, empathic Meira, seemed to feel her mother’s worry and showed Galadriel time and time again that she needed her, too. Not only for holding and braiding her hair, which grew ever longer, but mostly for all of her questions, of which there were many.

Meira asked Galadriel about everything under the sun. How the earth worked, how people worked, how society and laws and other species worked. She asked about men and orcs and dwarfs and ents and trolls and mostly about elves – because outside of her, Galadriel was the only one at court who was like her. Most of the time, those questions were easy enough to answer, but some were hard. For example when she had to explain to little Meira that she could not really have propper playmates for a while.

The other children at court of her size were still mortal babies and thus largely uninteresting to Meira because they simply did not do much other than stumble and babble, and while the older children, around eight, nine, or ten, did talk to her – mostly for the novelty and oddity of having full conversations with a toddler – they would not take her out to play with them. Meira was tiny and slow, more a hindrance than an asset in that way, other than for playing house. And Meira had no interest in playing the part of ‘babe’ and being carried around all day being forced to make wailing noises.

This frustrated Meira, made her impatient. The worst thing was that soon before her first birthday, her growth which had been staggering before, slowed down to a near complete halt. It was evident in her very spirit that Meira had not expected this. All she knew was growing fast and mastering new tasks and skills at a breakneck pace, and at this rate, she had expected to be one of the big kids in no time – but now everything but her mind was caught on a plateau.

She tried to run and run and run to keep up with everyone but she couldn’t. She was not a toddler, not really, but she toddled. She was more coordinated than any mortal child of her growth would be by a mile, but in the end it did not matter. She couldn’t do what the other children would do, let alone what her parents and the human adults did, and she could not fathom why that was.

***

“Mama, why did I stop growing?” She inevitably asked her mother one morning, when Galadriel brushed out her hair and tried to recall some of the braids Swete had done on her when she was still her Lady’s Maid, wanting to create one of the styles on Meira. “ I want to run fast and ride a horse like you and Papa, and play with the other children, but my legs do not work right.”

“Your legs work perfectly for what they are supposed to do,” Galadriel said carefully, encouragingly. “They carry you around one little sliver of the Earth at a time. You are still small, so that you learn to see the world the way small creatures see them. That is important.”

“But I have been small since I can remember. I have seen everything little now,” Meira complained, sincerely distraught, and it broke Galadriel’s heart. “I want to be big.”

“You know that you will be big for a very, very long time,” she told her daughter. “And one day, when you have been big for centuries, you will wish you could go back to being small. Do not rush growing up. There are so many beautiful things you get to do when you are small.” Galadriel looked at the wooden orc Grogol had carved for her and gifted her for her birth. “Like play.”

“But you play with me,” Meira argued. “And Papa plays. All the time. And you two are big, too.”

“We did not play before you came, though,” Galadriel confessed, hoping her daughter would see reason – she was usually really good about understanding things. “We only play with you, because you’re small.”

“You do not play?!” Meira sounded anything but understanding, really, she sounded aghast, almost pitying. “That is very sad. Do you not get bored, you and father?”

“We do other things,” Galadriel replied lightly.

“Like what?” Meira asked, very interested, and Galadriel had to swallow past the many inappropriate answers there were to that question.

“We talk,” she answered finally. “Sometimes we fight. Sometimes your father makes jokes.”

“I make jokes,” Meira said.

“Yes you do.” Galadriel nodded and started another braid of the left side of Meira’s head to match the one she had just finished on the right. “And they are very funny.”

Meira could only be placated by flattery for so long. “When will I be big, then?” She continued prodding. “Big like you and Papa?”

“Not for a while,” Galadriel said. “But you will be big enough to ride a horse in a couple of years.”

“How long is a year?”

“You are almost a year old now,” Galadriel replied and she could see Meira’s face contort in the mirror as she attempted to do the math, still a bit too advanced for her.

“And how many years until I can ride a horse?”

“Maybe twenty, fifteen if you start with a pony.” Galadriel shrugged, Meira’s face fell. “That’ll be over before you know it. And in only a hundred years, you will be big like Papa and me.”

“But a hundred years are forever, Mama!” Meira whined, all the sadness in the world in her high-pitched voice, and tears of frustration swimming in her eyes.

“Only when you’re little,” Galadriel said, hoping this would at least be a small comfort.

Meira just bit her lips, pouting and it tore Galadriel in two that she could not do anything to help change her biology. Instead, she could only finish up her braid and then pull her onto her lap into a hug and let Meira cry soft and stifled cries into her hair, letting the child grief her limiting circumstances in her own time.

***

When Meira’s first birthday came, the Princess of the Southlands had not grown a single further inch. However, since Meira – like her father – loved attention and adoration, having a full day of the entire realm dedicated to celebrate her birthday, was a definite solace for her, which she took with both hands. Much like the plethora of gifts she received, not only from her kingdom, but the whole of Middle Earth.

Mairon, of course, had tinkered and welded all sorts of new playthings for his daughter, so many that Galadriel chided him and warned him about spoiling their daughter rotten, but Bronwyn had also sown a gown, and the rest of the court had each made a gift, too.

Swete and Theo visited with their two children and had brought a fresh catch of fish which Swete then breaded and thus introduced to Meira’s new favourite food. The dwarves sent her a large rock, a piece of her birth stone. Celebrimbor, from Eregion, sent a set of filigree tiaras, increasing in size so they would grow up with the princess. Eärien, pregnant now, came to visit with her husband and brought a couple of ponies which Meira had requested. And Elrond had sent a gift all the way from the Grey Havens – which quickly turned into Meira’s favourite one.

It was a little training bow with a quiver full of dull arrows and an arm guard. It was fashioned in the elven way, so that even the smallest children, hungry for stimulation, could get their start on learning archery. Meira was instantly alight with the idea. She marched with her little bow and Galadriel on her hand towards the targets that had been set up on the town square at the foot of the White Tower – in celebration of her birthday, the whole city had turned into a carnival – and the citizens of Galador cooed, remarking a hundred-fold on how adorable the child looked, with her little bow over her little shoulder and fire in her eyes.

The King followed them and caught up with Galadriel, whispering under his breath: “Are we certain this is a good idea? Teaching her archery?”

“Why?” Galadriel challenged. “Because she is a girl?”

“No,” he said hurriedly. “But–”

“No buts,” decided Galadriel as Meira dropped her hand to run as best as she could, crossing the square to get to the targets. “If she wants to learn archery, she can. As well as anything else she pleases.”

And that was that.

Meira took to archery immediately. After some instructions by Galadriel, and her father correcting her form, she managed to hit the outer circle of the target after two tries and the inner one after five. On her tenth arrow, she hit the bull’s eye dead-centre to the surprised gasps of the crowd.

Like Lúthien, Galadriel thought, and looked down at her brown-haired half-Maian daughter in wonder. She was made for this. A born warrior. She would never know war though, this Galadriel swore to herself. Meira could hunt boars and deer in the forests but she would never have to aim an arrow at an enemy. Galadriel would never let it get to this. Catching her husband’s eye, she would tell he was thinking much of the same thing.

“Well shot, Princess Meira!” The attendant of the archery set-up said and bowed to the child. “Would the lady like another shot?”

“Forgive me, but it is a little boring, my lord, with a target so still,” Meira said. “Might you have something that moves?”

The kindly man grinned because he did and led the girl, her parents and the gaggle of spectators to his moving targets, operated by a lever by a young lad that was a spittin image of the attendant – but soon enough Meira tired of that, too. She did not get every single one, but getting nearly all sufficed to make her demand more of a challenge. Only this time, the attendant could not satisfy the princess. But then the man had an idea.

“Perhaps I could climb up to this wall up there and run around on it and you could try to hit me?” He offered and at the same time Meira squealed with excitement, Mairon said: “Absolutely not.”

“But father,” Meira complained, knowing not to call him Papa in company. “He offered! He does not mind, does he?”

She pointed at the carnival attendant who shook his head eagerly. Galadriel had no trouble believing him for a second. Her daughter had a way about her which made people desperately want to please her.

“See, he does not mind – it would be such fun! Please father, please!” Meira went on the full offence, begging.

She blinked up at her father from below her brow, through thick black eyelashes, like an adorable little doe and Galadriel had to laugh because one, she had seen this beseeching look on Mairon about a million times, and two, she knew he would be completely unable to tell her no like this. She had her father wrapped so very tightly around her tiny little fingers. As if to prove her hunch, Mairon grumbled, then groaned – and then gave in.

“Fine,” he said. “But I will not have you shoot arrows at this kindly man here,” Mairon declared. “You will try and hit me.”

Meira had no qualms about that. She happily watched as Mairon climbed up the wall, swiftly but not too swiftly, seeing as he had a hundred watchful pairs of eyes on him, and then Meira looked up to her mother with a grin as Galadriel loaded the dull arrows back into her daughter’s quiver.

“Where should I aim at, mother?” Meira asked her with a glint in her eye.

“Not the face, not the groin,” Galadriel replied, fighting her own grin, trying to remain as dignified as possible. “Thus demands good sportsmanship. Everything else is fair game.”

“Very well.” Meira nodded, waited for her father to give her the go ahead and start running along the length of the wall, and then she fired.

Mairon did not make it easy on her. Galadriel had to applaud the way he posed a challenge, while not making his subjects aware that he could easily be much more limber, much faster, much more swift. Their audience had split evenly, some chanting “King Halbrand, King Halbrand!” while others yelled “Princess Meira! Princess Meira!” and Meira got a little frustrated as her father averted her shots. The attendant’s son would collect her arrows from the strip of grass beneath the wall Mairon stood on, careful not to get his shoes dirty in the large, brown puddle there, and returned them to Meira as fast as he could.

It was such a sight to see this toddler get ever more heated, trying to land an arrow on her father, the king, and almost curse under her breath, which only Galadriel could hear and hiss a warning to remember where her daughter was. Meira nodded, and her energy stirred. Galadriel could feel it in the air around them, the way she could, when Mairon drew from his greater, his godly strength, and knew Meira had had enough of being taunted.

And taunting her, Mairon had been. He practically danced along the wall’s edge, tiptoeing, himself enjoying the cheers from the crowd, letting himself fall a bit into the role of showman. This was every bit the man who had made up a song on the spot at a bonfire years ago without a second to ponder it. But Meira was peeved now – and a force to reckon with. Galadriel heard her daughter take a small breath, adjust her stance, correct her arm’s position like Mairon had shown her, and then fired her final arrow.

She had done it so fast, Galadriel could barely follow its flight. Mairon had been distracted on his wall there with an especially artful spin, and one of his feet was mid-air when Meira’s arrow hit him in the buttock, catching him completely off guard and worse, off balance. It took another heartbeat until he lost his footing entirely. It was not a far drop, but it seemed to last forever. The dull arrow fell just as Mairon did and hit the ground a moment before him. But where the arrow landed softly in the grass, Mairon landed – bottom first – right in the muddy puddle.

Galadriel held her breath as a collective gasp ravaged the crowd. One could have heard a pin drop in that moment, everyone waiting to see how the king would react. With her good ears, Galadriel could hear how many behind her struggled to hold back laughter, as was she. Gladly, Mairon released them all by loudly hollering a laugh himself then.

He cajoled, laughing with his full belly as he stood up, shaking off his wet trousers and then when everyone joined in, he charged forward and caught Meira in his arms, throwing her, bow and all, into the air once and then caught her, squealing and laughing and he hugged her tight.

“Expertly done, my lady,” he told her and shifted her to sit on his hips, then led their people in louder and louder chants of her name.

Galadriel stood aside, watching the scene unfold, her heart so full and warm, it felt as if it was expanding to the full size of her ribcage. It was then that Mairon caught her gaze. His eyes glimmered, soft and proud – and a little sad, which she made a mental note off of asking him about later. But then she could not linger on it, as the next order of the day was decided on by Meira: she wanted her cake for celebration now, and she wanted to invite all of the people of Galador to the Great Hall and eat it with her. The people happily followed her invitation.

***

The festivities below in the city were still lively and Galadriel looked down upon them from her balcony, smiling. One story below, Mairon was singing their daughter to sleep, she could hear the sound faint and beautiful, coming from Meira’s window below. Galadriel was content, just standing there, listening to it, but then the air blistered around her and something tugged at her mind, which diverted her attention. She opened herself up to it and then Elrond appeared beside her, an image conjured up by their soul’s connection. She smiled brightly, deeply happy to see him because it had been a long time.

“Forgive me that I could not be there for your daughter’s birthday,” he told her, inclining his head. “I am afraid being High King of the Elves leaves me little time to do much else. – But I have sent an envoy with a gift.”

“Thank you, it has arrived safely,” Galadriel said easily and he knew she was not angry. “Meira was very pleased. – Her father a little less so.”

“He took an arrow?” Elrond asked, his eyebrow raised, a grin tucking at his mouth.

“To the bottom,” Galadriel confirmed, chuckled and he snickered.

Then he was quiet for a moment, the two of them just drinking each other in.

“You look well,” he said. “Motherhood becomes you.”

She nodded her thanks, and then could not help but inquire, because really, it had been long since they had spoken last.

“How is Celeborn?” She asked carefully, feeling guilty at the mention of her obvious bliss, regarding her first husband who had been so distraught when they had parted. “Is he still pleased ruling Halindon?”

“Actually, I think his time travelling with Gandalf and Saruman has infected him with a bit of a drive to adventure yet,” Elron replied easily, not dwelling on the past, most likely to spare Galadriel’s feelings, which she was glad to him for. “He has volunteered to join their travels to Númenor and act as an elven emissary.”

“Númenor?” Her smile died and her forehead wrinkled, feeling like she had missed something, like she had been too preoccupied with her daughter to keep up with the happenings of Middle Earth. “Why Númenor? Why now?”

“Well, when King Isildur mentioned that the refugee boats from the island kingdom had ceased arriving, I for one thought it was cause for concern,” Elrond answered. “And there was another thing.”

She could tell instantly from the look on his face and she understood his sudden urgency.

“You had a vision of foresight,” she stated, remembering the images of Númenor being engulfed by the Sundering Sea in a wave of destruction and despair. “You saw the island drown.”

“As it seems so have you,” Elrond noted.

“I’ve seen it in a Palantir once when I was there,” she said. “But I thought we had saved the island from that fate when the Queen Regent sailed to Middle Earth with me. She stood with the elves.”

“Their Chancellor Pharazon arguably does not,” Elrond reminded her gravely. “Celeborn and Lord Thranduil will accompany the wizards and sail for Númenor, to hopefully avert this fate.”

“Can I do anything?” Galadriel asked, feeling a fresh pang of guilt over having been so distracted. She felt for a shadow, felt for it across the ocean but if it was there, it was faint – still she could see the vision of doom had rattled Elrond. Maybe she should have paid more attention, maybe she should remember that she had a role to play here in Middle Earth and it was not just to rule the Southlands and have children. “Do you need me to go with them?”

“No,” Elrond said quickly and then smiled at her kindly. “I need you to tend to your kingdom and your family. I would have called for you, if it was any different.”

“Never hesitate,” she bid. “I am still one of you. I am still your kin.”

Elrond gave her a little look, something barely readable that spoke a little of doubt, but it did not last long enough to offend her.

“I have to return to my duties,” Elrond told her as if he was being called from another room, his words laced with regret and reluctance. “Namárië, Galadriel. – And all my love to your daughter and husband. I will come visit as soon as my circumstances allow.”

Galadriel could do naught but nod and tell him goodbye. Only when he was gone did it sink in how much she had missed him. But soon, Mairon sang his last words below her, soft and sweet, and she was distracted again. Maybe Elrond was right. He had things well in hand and she did have her family to tend to. Maybe, just for the time being, this was enough.

***

In bed with her husband, she recalled the reminder she had made to herself earlier, the one to inquire about the odd look that had passed between them in the afternoon, and she stopped him cold when he leaned in to kiss her. Sobering him up. But Galadriel had made a habit out of talking to him about important things right away.

“You looked troubled today. After Meira bested you,” she began. “Did that have anything to do with you not wanting her to try archery?”

“I am just–” Mairon started and stopped, looking for the right words but not precious with his answer. “–apprehensive about her using force.”

“Because you fear that there is too much of you in her?” She really did not have to ask because she knew him enough to know the truth of her words, but she did it anyway.

“There is.” He nodded. “She is so much like me, I do not know how to manage her sometimes. I am afraid that my shadows might swallow her one day.”

“They won’t,” she promised him sincerely and without a doubt in her mind.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because there is so much of you in her, and all of it your very best qualities,” she said, moving closer to him, tracing his jaw beneath his beard. “She is tenacious and ambitious and hungry and she wants to be the best. But she is also level-headed and deliberate. She is patient, dedicated and empathic. She can anticipate what people want and need and she has no desire to hurt anyone.”

“As long as she gets her way,” he added warily, catching her wandering hand in his, pressing a kiss onto her fingers.

“And that is where we come in,” she whispered reassuringly. “If we do not spoil her and make her understand that she can’t have everything that she wants whenever she wants it, she will be just fine, I promise you.”

“You have a lot of faith in me,” he muttered.

“Well, you worked hard for it,” she attested. “Let it not be said that I do not reward growth.”

He sighed deeply, but he was smiling now. “I do not deserve you.”

“No, you don’t.” She grinned. “But I’ll let you make up the difference.”

He understood this as the exact invitation it was meant as, chuckling softly, and then he covered her body with his.

They had resumed laying together a few months after Meira’s birth, but only when they had charted her courses. Tonight, however, neither of them cared. He moved in her with abandon and she shook beneath him with release twice before he followed and he stayed buried in her for a while after, thrusting softly through the aftershocks, smiling down at her with stars in his eyes.

Until he didn’t.

“What?” She asked, grabbing his hands as his mouth dropped open and his eyes grew large. “Mairon, what is it?”

He shuddered, groaned, and then collapsed on top of her, his full weight landing on her, briefly knocking the air out of her lungs. She was so surprised it took her a moment to remember that she was strong enough to steady him. She held him upright, pushed him up and he coughed, coming to.

“What has just happened?” She asked him once he opened his eyes again, his limbs trembling.

“You’re pregnant again,” he told her unceremoniously, huffing, and then rolled over, letting his back hit the mattress where he tried to catch his breath. “I just felt… felt it so strongly. My spirit getting pushed into me. Like a hammer to my chest.”

Galadriel only looked at him as the full weight of his words sunk in. And not the fact that she had another year of pregnancy ahead of her – but rather what this meant for him.

For now, Sauron, Mairon, the Maia, was completely and forevermore, bound to his human form.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR: THE HUNDRED YEAR PEACE

The Prince of the Southlands, Emil – meaning to strive, and to excel – was born a full year and two weeks after his conception, having not a shred of the urgency of his sister to leave the safety of his mothers womb. In many ways, Emil was the polar opposite of Meira.

Where she was willful and wild, Emil was considerate and calm. She loved attention, he preferred the sidelines, observing crowds rather than being in the middle of them. She could be brash, he was always polite. She was cunning, even more so than her father, he was straightforward and valued honesty above everything else. She had brunette curls, he was blonde like his mother and never allowed his hair to be cut below his collar bone. She would grow up to be just a few inches taller than her mother, he would rise to Mairon’s height.

What the siblings had in common however, even as small children, was their talent for the martial arts and their prowess of mind. Even the static of their energy was startlingly similar. The half-Maia in them meant they were uniquely tied together as well. Many times it seemed like the children knew to converse with each other with little more than a look, like they shared a connection which meant words were unnecessary.

Once when they were both still in their toddling days, they sat together on the thick carpet on the foot of their parent’s bed, fighting over the winter solstice gifts they had received from court. It was not like neither of them didn’t have cupboards full of toys of their father’s making, but a courtier had given Emil a kittle mechanical frog with an internal mechanism which caused the frog to jump – and while Emil was content to let the frog hop around the room and giggle in delight, Meira wanted to know how the thing worked and tried to take it from him, so she could take it apart.

Galadriel only became aware of the squabble between the children when Emil took his first steps out of pure spite to chase after his sister who had wrangled the toy out of his chubby little hands. Now her son cried as he ran, more surely on his feet than any child who had just begun to walk should have any right to be, his shaggy platinum blond hair falling into his reddened forehead. Meira half-hid behind the spruce tree they had set up and decked out in straw stars and tiny candles, as was customary among the mortals to celebrate the evergreen trees symbolising endurance and the end of the dark season. Mairon jumped up just in time to keep Emil from angrily ripping the tree down and setting the room aflame.

“Calm yourself!” He admonished the child, which made Emil even more furious, his who being beating with the injustice he was experiencing.

“But she took my frog!” He argued, and he sounded aghast, so different from his usual calm and forgiving nature. His sister had pushed him too far, not that she cared.

“You can have it back,” she promised and fully rounded the tree, already fingering at the parts of the toy, ripping it apart with her superior strength.

Emil cried even louder when he saw and threw little angry fists at his father who picked him up from the floor.

“She is destroying it, Papa!” He complained, as sad as anyone could be, because in his young life, he had not experienced much that had been worse than this.

“Meira, stop!” Galadriel ordered her daughter, herself on her way to grab the frog from her before she could so irreparable damage, but the the brass shell of the thing already popped off and landed on Mairon’s desk which Meira had climbed upon with a dull thud and the frog lay armour-less before them, its insides exposed.

Mairon sighed, carrying Emil over but holding him tight, so he could not jump on his sister to tear out her hair, which he very much tried to. Galadriel reached the desk, too, running her fingers gently through her son's hair, trying to get him to calm down.

“This was badly done, Meira,” Mairon chastised her but her daughter seemed entirely unrattled by the chiding.

“But look!” Meira pointed out the little cogs inside of the apparatus, taking them apart and putting them back together. “This is how the frog jumps, Emil!”

Emil sniffled and calmed a little. “Ho- how?”

“See?” Meira explained, turning the wheels with her fingers, to show her brother how the legs of it worked and suddenly Emil fell silent and observed, as if he had willed himself to reason and pliance with a wisdom far advanced from his years.

Mairon threw Galadriel a look and then placed Emil gently in his desktop, too and he did not attack Meira but watched her as she explored more of the gears and trappings of the toy and then watched even closer as she retracted her steps of tearing it apart to put it back together. Finally, she placed the shell back onto the thing with a little click, set it right side up again and wound the frog up, so it started to hop again.

“See?” She said and patted Emil’s little hand. “I just wanted to see how it works.”

Emily swallowed, breathed out deeply as if he was an old man and nodded. “It’s alright. I forgive you.”

Meira grinned and Galadriel could tell Mairon, looking on from above the children, hovering over them, was fighting a chuckle.

Other than learning to walk and run because of his sister, Emil also learned a number of other things from Meira, who looked at her brother as a sort of project to mould in her image. After the short months where Emil was truly a helpless babe – which she had spent in apprehensive impatience – by his seventh month, shortly after the Winter Fest, Meira, who was not so much larger than him at this point, finally had the playmate she had always wanted. She taught him how to use the bow and arrow after Elrond made Emil the matching gift to hers. She dreamed up parts for him in her and her father’s games of play-pretend and within a couple of months, the two children had designed their very own world where they were mostly enough for each other.

Their early childhoods were pretty similar, although Emil did not have as many questions about his very nature as Meira had had, mostly because he had his sister to emulate and his nature was not quite as inquisitive as hers. He was tempered, tranquil – and blessedly so, because carrying him had been strenuous enough without another demanding, untamed spirit to contend with. Because with the second pregnancy had come the nightmares. Terrible, horrible nightmares.

They were incessant, almost nightly. The downfall of Númenor was a frequent one but she also saw the Southlands burn, the dark turn cold and barren, buried under ash, ravaged by angry orcs and fallen men. And always a flaming red eye looking down over what had once been called Mordor, seeing everything, burning into her soul. Something about these dreams was so eerie, like they weren’t really dreams at all but visions. Or memories. Like all of it had happened before. Galadriel tried her best to cope with them by herself – but she would often wake up in the middle of the night screaming and thrashing and of course, her husband was increasingly worried.

Mairon himself did not dream, even though he slept now. He actually suppressed whatever dreams his mind did conjure up, citing that he had seen and done so many terrible things he would rather not risk opening his mind to them. For a time, he tried to teach Galadriel to suppress hers in the same vein but she was afraid she could miss something important, some foresight buried under the horror – because she, unlike him, was not entirely sure they were just tricks of the mind – so she abandoned the attempt and endured the dreams, hoping they would fade after she gave birth. Which they did not, but she did not know this at the time of course.

The one thing that worried her about accepting the dreams, was that her uneasy spirit might darken her son’s, but Emil was born with as good as a smile on his face and he was a sweet, easy baby and then grew into a sweet and easy child, who was easily made happy. His biggest passion from the time he could hold a brush was art. His first few paintings – of the cats prancing around the White Tower to the thick forests at the back of the city, to his older sister’s countenance – were crude and childish. But he quickly refined his technique and soon enough, everyone at court had at least one of his pieces hung on some wall somewhere.

Though once after his birth, Galadriel's fears resurfaced, about what her dreams during pregnancy had done to him – and also made her fear that the ones she still had might have an affect on him even to the day. It was a few years into his landscape phase, when he proudly presented her with a large painting that made her nearly choke on her tea in horror. It was a terribly accurate depiction of a monstrously dark tower, taller than their home by a league skyeward, nestled at the foot of the mountains where Galador would have been. But it was not Galador Emil had painted for her, it was Mordor. And atop the black tower sat a flaming eye, looking right at her.

Galadriel sought to mask her instant concern, her heart beating fast in her chest. She was alone with her son, while Mairon was down at the stables with Meira and the absence of her husband’s easy temper was more crushing than it had any right to be. He would have settled her but without him she was uneasy.

“How did you… how did you think of this?” She asked her son, trying to keep her voice even.

Emil shrugged, smiling. “I don’t know. I just started painting and I thought of the eye and the more I thought about it, the more I knew where it should be, what it would all look like. – Do you like it, Mama?”

“It is very… vivid,” Galadriel complimented half-heartedly, trying to rationalise how her son could know this nightmarish scene from one of her most dreadful reveries.

Emil did not seem scared however and he did not gift her any more of these paintings after, returning quickly to vistas of lush meadows and sundering seas. So Galadriel pushed her worries to the side and hoped that this ghastly experience was a one-of, explaining it away to herself, citing remnants of the pregnancy, and praying that the continuous nightmares were restricted to her own mind. She did try and suppress them from then on, like Mairon had shown her, simply to make absolutely certain they would not spill over to her children – and the most time, it worked.

It was easier to distract herself from those that did break through, too, focusing more on her children, and so for a while there was just this dim sense of discomfort, of a silent shadow lurking around the corner. But it was only clear to her if she went looking for it, which she did not. Like a locked room that held terror but it could not harm you, if you held the door shut. She would not glance inside, would not open it out of her own volition. Because she had a family to raise and a kingdom to run. A kingdom that was steadily growing.

***

When the prince and princess were about ten years old, around the size of human children at three, they packed them up into a carriage and took them along on a track across the realm. They went from Galador to Seatown to visit Swete and Theo, and from then on to every new settlement that was on its way to becoming a city, until finally they reached the orc mountains.

Meira especially had a jolly time at their final stop – she had taken a special liking to Grogol in the council sessions she insisted on sitting in on and the burly creature was just as taken with her. So, he made the tour through their dark blocky, tunnelled city one to remember. Mostly for Meira, because he carried her on his shoulders and introduced her to his entire family. Emil was by no means scared of the orcs but he was shy, and spent most of the tour on Galadriel’s hips, his face buried in her hair. He still sketched a quick portrait of Grogol’s daughter by the end of it, and if orcs could have cried, Galadriel knew Grogol would have at the sight.

Emil emerged from the mountain on Galadriel’s hand, smiling proudly at having made the creature happy. But Meira was not as gleeful. For she started crying hysterically because she did not want to leave, which was when Emil’s mood switched on a dime and he and started randomly crying along with her for no apparent reason than sympathy, standing side by side bawling, and they could not be consoled until they were well on their way back to Galador.

It was moments like these that made Galadriel have to swallow down waves of anxiety. There was nothing tangible about it – but seeing her children so in tune together and Meira so distraught about leaving the orcs behind… it created a sense of dread that Mairon had once raised about their children. What if they were prone to darkness? What if the shadow she tried so hard to ignore, fell from her own house? She cast the thought firmly aside.

No. Her children were not evil. They were of sunny dispositions and they were deeply loved. They had everything they needed and a firm hand to guide them. There was nothing to worry about – they were merely still children. And even if elven childhoods lasted longer than human ones, they were very much finite, unlike the adult life which followed it. Galadriel reminded herself of this frequently, both to reassure herself that childish anger would fade and to make herself enjoy those moments where their kids had absolutely normal childish outbursts, because it meant they still needed her to comfort them. Which she never refused them.

***

She did not spoil them as much as Mairon did in terms of material things – he was hopeless in that regard, but she did indulge in fulfilling their emotional needs. She did not interrogate if she did this out of an abundance of caution – trying her best to keep them on the path to light. Instead she chose to look at it as her duty as a mother. She wanted to nurture their spirits and this entailed encouraging their drive to master new skills and their will to knowledge.

When they turned twenty and eighteen respectively, they were both finally big enough to make the switch from ponies to horses. Needless to say that Galadriel spent a lot more time outdoors that summer, watching over the kids as they were riding their steeds across the wide open pastures outside the city bounds, ever supportive of their endeavours.

The sun hung high in the sky one day, when Mairon rode up behind her, having spent the morning overseeing the construction progress of a new town hall, as the one in the White Tower was increasingly too small. Galadriel watched him dismount from where she sat on a spacious blanket and smiled as he grinned and waved at the children who yelled their hellos to him from horseback.

Mairon dropped down next to her, pecking her quickly on the lips. He smiled at her and then launched into a summary of the morning’s happenings and only noticed about five minutes into their rather one-sided conversation, that she was not really paying attention.

“What is it?” He asked her after a moment long enough to alert her to the fact that he had stopped talking about the new Town Hall.

“You know what it is,” she told him readily. She did not keep secrets from him anymore, and did not cushion things either. “The nightmares. This sense of dread I have felt for twenty years. I know you feel it, too.”

“But my love, we have scoured Middle Earth… we have sent a battalion of scouts across the plains and orcs through the mountains and there is no trace of darkness here,” he told her and to his credit, he tried hard to mask how tired this conversation was for him – they had been having versions of it for years now. “Gondor is safe, Lindon is safe, Eregion is safe, the dwarf kingdom is safe. – And you know it is not me either, I am always with you.”

“And you have no interest in endangering this world,” she said evenly. “I know.”

Mairon chuckled. “I never thought I would hear you say this with your full chest. That you would believe me changed.”

“I do not know if you are changed,” she replied, raising an eyebrow at him, “but I know you love your children and this is their home. You would not risk it.”

He smiled and took her hand. “Then why can you not try to rest? Let the shadow be. We have peace now, you and I, our kingdom, all of Middle Earth. Our children are growing up beautifully.” He gestured at the two of them racing each other, a league away. “Let us cherish it.”

She did not have the heart to tell them that a large part of her dread was that maybe their kids could be the reason why the darkness lingered at the back of her mind. But she wanted to believe him, and do exactly as he suggested – cherish the peace and tranquillity, and trust that their children were safe in every way, even from their own future.

“Are you implying that I am seeing doom where there is none?” She tried to make it sound light but they both knew that with her past, having her grim forebodings questioned did not please her in any case.

“I am thinking that you have never lived so close with humans before and now the ones you have held closest to your heart are getting older and older,” he said carefully and Galadriel was thrown for a moment.

This was not what she had expected him to say and she did not know where he was going with it. She had never thought of it this way, not once.

“Bronwyn is near old enough to retire,” Mairon continued to explain, “she might have ten, twenty more years before we lose her, too. Theo’s little brother is almost a man grown and Theo himself is a grandfather now. You have never been this close to people who death touches before, it is natural that it would not just roll off of you. It is only natural, that this would come with a sense of doom and transience.”

“So you mean to say I am seeing ghosts ahead of their time?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged.

“You might be right,” Galadriel heard herself say, weighing the thought in her mind.

He might truly be correct. Moreover, she wanted him to be correct. She indeed had never lived this closely with mortals and nowadays there passed nary a half year without someone she liked dying. Be that soldiers from the troop, the older citizens who had first built Galador with them, or courtiers who lived in the tower with them. Maybe that was the reason for her nightmares. Maybe in dreams, her spirit processed the never-ending grief for the people she so consistently lost and made her fear the downfall of Middle Earth, inventing phantoms from the void those losses created. Maybe continuously losing people to the eternal darkness made her fearful to lose the ones she loved the most to the same as well: her children.

“I shall regard this as a personal triumph.” Mairon grinned. “I feel like it does not happen so much anymore. Me, being right about things.”

Galadriel laughed. He was being sweet – and he also did not mean it. He was right a lot and he usually would not let her forget it. But he had spent enough nights being woken up by her frantic cries that he had the good sense to lift her spirits now. She wanted to kiss him to show her gratitude, but then Meira yelled from the other side of the grass and both their heads whipped around. It took them each about half a second to be on their feet, because in the distance they saw that Emil had taken a tumble off of his horse.

Galadriel jumped on Mairon’s horse a second after her husband did and clung to his back as he raced to where Emil had fallen and Meira was trying to help him stand. They dismounted quickly and it was startling how small the children were, now in their peril, when in her mind, they were already so grown. The truth of the matter was that they were both about as high as a ten year old mortal child, both with long limbs and gangly. Meira attempted to lift him, but even if she was stronger than a mortal child would be by far, her movements were still unrefined and slightly uncoordinated, which made Emil wince and demand she sat him down again.

“I cannot stand,” he cried, tears streaking down his reddened cheeks – though Galadriel could tell it was more from embarrassment than pain, that would come later, right now, he was still in shock. “My leg hurts.”

“Shh, it’s alright,” Mairon said and was gentle where Meira had not been, reaching under his son’s frame, careful not to touch any part of him too harshly.

He lifted him up with him and Emil threw his arms around him. Now the pain sunk in. Galadriel felt it in her son’s energy, almost like it was her own agony. She stepped closer to her husband and son to examine the bruising limb.

“Does this hurt?” She asked, pressing down just a little on Emil’s shin and he screeched in response.

“I think the leg might be broken,” mused Mairon, his brow furrowed and she nodded in agreement.

Then Mairon lay his palm gingerly onto where their son’s leg was darkening by the moment. He could not heal him entirely, not without severely overextending himself, now that he was bound to his human form and his powers were not as grand as they had once been – but it was enough to dull the pain and set the fracture to right. Emil’s cries quieted, at least a bit.

“We should get him to the healers,” Galadriel said.

“Do you think you will be able to ride?” Mairon asked Emil and the boy lifted his head, his lips pressed together and quivering, but he nodded bravely.

That was enough for his father who then passed him over to Galadriel, got back onto his steed and lifted Emil up once more, securing the child on his lap.

“We will meet you at home,” Galadriel told him and then whispered to his horse: “Noro lim.”

***

Emil was promised a speedy recovery. The chief healer, upon closer examination, felt confident that the broken leg could have fractured way worse and would swiftly grow back together with enough bedrest and the young prince staunchly took those orders to heart. The lot was sweetened for him by getting a ton of attention and doting courtiers extending their well wishes and gifts – Meira did not like this much, but swallowed her chagrin at being overshadowed for a time for her brother’s sake.

Galadriel was just happy that he was alright. She was also thankful for having felt the contrast of the vague fear for them brought on by the nightmares and the truly tangible feel of watching her son fall off of a horse. It helped to put things in perspective, gave her more of a grasp on what was real or not, at least for a time.

The only thing Galadriel was sad to see, was that the other children from court, who Meira and Emil had been friends with, did not have too much time to attend to Emil, which made the boy sad. And it was hard to explain to him that their friends, who were all by now verging on adulthood, simply had time consuming matters to attend to which did not permit them to sit at his bedside for hours on end. Be that combat training, schooling or learning a trade. The close friends they had made were growing up while the prince and princess were still stuck in their small bodies, on their slower trajectory.

It was the same old problem rearing its head that had already troubled Meira so, and his injury made Emil doubly aware of the tragedy of this. It seemed like Galadriel and both her children struggled with the same thing: the mortality of their closest associates. Which was what eventually led to her floating the idea to Mairon to send the children to live among elves for a time.

“Not forever,” she hurried to say, catching Mairon’s frown as they lay in bed discussing the matter one night when Emil’s leg was back to rights. “Just until they’re grown enough to not be outpaced by their peers within two or three years. – You saw it in me, how much even I struggle with the passage of time here, and if we can offer them a way to truly enjoy their childhoods, we should grant them this.”

It was also a quiet concern that the constant outgrowing, coming with a sense of being cast aside by their closest friends, would make the children resentful – of mortals or other beings in general – and Galadriel did not want to make them resent any living thing, just to be sure. Sending them away would keep them happy… and safe.

It took a few more nights and more arguments to finally win their father over to her idea, loathe as he was to part with his kids, but he finally relented – and Galadriel wound up reaching out to Calathiel, an elf she and Celeborn had once fostered as a youth in Halindon, who was now married to Lord Thranduil, governing the Greenwood kingdom on her own for the time being since Thranduil had gone to Númenor with Celeborn and the wizards.

It was lucky that it had happened thus, because Thranduil was not particularly fond of Galadriel, due to her being Noldorian, and she would rather not have his foul mood extended upon her children. But sending them there was just the prudent thing to do because Calathiel had two sons – Laindawar and Laerophen – who were just a little older than Meira and Emil and there were a few other elven children in Greenwood, more than presently in Lindon and Halindon combined, which would give her daughter and son a chance for a youth surrounded by peers who would not out-age them constantly.

Of course it pained her to send them away and the children cried and cried when the time came to say goodbye. But as sad as they were, they had enough sense to look forward to their time as Calathiel’s wards as well. Meira tried to convince her mother quite vehemently to come with them but Galadriel could leave neither realm nor husband for any length of time. So, eventually, the children went alone with an envoy from Greenwood who made sure they all arrived in the elven kingdom next to the Misty Mountains in one piece.

Mairon was more uneasy than Galadriel had seen him in years when they left, and he would not let them go without putting a glimmer on them, concealing and limiting both their half-Maia powers. He was afraid that among the ever-perceptive elves, someone would find out what they were. Though Galadriel knew he did not do this out of fear of his own detection. He was scared that if someone put two and two together, faced with his children, that they could be held for assurances or to pressure him in some way and she knew he would tear the world apart if any harm came to them.

“It is better this way,” Galadriel said wistfully, standing next to him on their balcony, using the high vantage point to follow their trail down the Great Road until their travel party was naught but a little dot on the horizon. “I already miss them terribly, too, but they need to be around other children more like them.”

“I know,” Mairon said, his knuckles white from how hard he gripped the balustrade. “But that does not make it easier letting them go.”

She put her hand on his, willing for his grip to ease but it took a while. Finally, he interlaced their fingers – but still held onto her firmly.

“Why did you not go with them?” He asked her.

“How could I send them away and then leave you here alone, too?”

“Because you do not trust me to stay the course without you here?” He asked and she fell silent, which irked him. “No, that’s not it.” He narrowed his eyes at her, she could see it from the corners of hers. “What is it you fear, tell me.”

“I am not guarding you,” she told him sincerely, expecting this was the conclusion he had jumped to.

“And you’re not guarding them either,” he said slowly, piecing it together. “You are not sending them away from us, you are keeping us from them.”

“This is not about us, this is about the children,” she insisted, turning her head away from him. “About them growing up with their kin.”

“That’s not the whole truth of it. Admit it, Galadriel,” he raised his voice, just an increment but it was the most pressing he had been in literal years.

Finally, she faced him again, huffed out a breath. “I’m merely trying to make sure that we are not a bad influence on them.”

“We?” He repeated, his jaw squaring. “You mean me. – You fear the shadow is them?! Our children. You think I sullied them.”

“No,” she said quickly and shook her head, she leapt at him to touch and appease him, but he evaded her, putting some distance between them. “I do not think it is anything you did.”

“Just who I am,” he said tightly. “What I passed on.”

This was one of his biggest fears, which had been precisely why she had not wanted him to know that it was a part of her reasoning to part with their children.

“Please, Mairon, I am just trying to guide them onto the right path.” She finally managed to grab him, caught his arm and squeezed it, so he kept his eyes on her. “When I was worried about Meira’s powers you told me we would guide her to the light – that is all I am trying to do and it has nothing to do with you.”

“You don’t think me a good enough father to keep them around,” he said, but she knew it was a question.

“No!” She shook her head. “No, you are a wonderful father. – Please, my love. You have to know this. I am just trying to do what is best for them. I do not think it is you, otherwise I would have gone with them. I think it might as well be me.”

Those gruelling nightmares that keep haunting me, she thought but did not say out loud. Maybe they are spilling over.

“Please, can you believe me?” She begged him, cradled his arm – but Mairon would not be consoled.

She knew, deep down, that he believed her – but it took a long time until he forgave her – and she could not blame him.

The years that followed were difficult between them. They were as close as ever but their children had left a hole in their home and Galadriel tried to keep her nightmares at bay and out of his attention – but with every passing year, they were harder to keep at bay. It did not help her constitution that around her, their mortal companions kept dying. As the years passed and she saw her children grow up safely and peacefully from a distance, spending time with them in idle daydreams, she tried to get herself used to losing people she loved. And for the most part, she found a way to cope. But two decades later, when her kids were around forty years old, there was a death that hit her harder than the others had in the years before.

***

Bronwyn died at eighty-two years of age from an infected and failing kidney, which she had not known about until it was too late, and the sudden news rattled Galadriel to the core. Before she even had a proper opportunity to say goodbye, Bronwyn’s funeral came and went. Galadriel spent the wake consoling Theo, his wife and children and Gereon, Bronwyn and Brod’s son. She followed Halbrand in making a speech she barely got through without sobbing.

She spoke at length about how much of a hero Bronwyn had been, how smart an advisor and how cunning a military strategist. The most difficult thing to voice without breaking out in tears, however, was what an excellent, loving and great friend the woman had been.

When she was done, she sank back down onto her seat next to Mairon in the Great Hall and watched their subjects toast to Bronwyn’s memory. Her husband took her hand gently and squeezed it. He was still tender and sweet with her when they went to bed that night, treating her like somewhat of a raw egg, a little like the way he had done when she had been pregnant. They were brought together closer by the loss – and for the first time in years she felt like Mairon – in the face of her grief – truly forgave her for why she had sent their kids to Greenwood. It made her tell him something she had come to believe in the quiet of her own mind – watching how Meira and Emil thrived without her, seeming unburdened by any shadows in any way.

"You were right,” she said eventually, splayed out on his chest in their bed at night, breathing in his scent deeply because it comforted her. “I think it was me all along, this fear of the shadows. It is all this death. It unsettles me. Makes me… brittle. – How did you stand it? When you lived among humans for centuries?”

"I am ashamed to say I did not let myself care too much,” Mairon admitted and because he had been who he had been throughout all of those centuries, it was not hard to believe him.

"But you cared for Bronwyn,” she said because his past did not explain why he was not in the state Galadriel was in at the moment, “why are you not more distraught?”

"I am,” he replied. “But I have had an age to get used to this sort of loss. And I have said my goodbyes to Bronwyn, she knew how much she meant to me… that is all you can ask for anyone to know before they pass.”

“That they were important to someone?”

“That they were loved,” he said pensively.

Galadriel sighed. “I am glad that the children do not have to be here for this.”

"We cannot shelter them from loss forever, though,” Mairon reminded her. “Rest assured, they grieve in Greenwood as we speak, just the same. They loved Bronwyn, too.” He dropped his voice low, putting clear words to what had since just been hinted at in previous conversations. “We cannot shield them from any trace of darkness in fear of it turning them into monsters. They are not monsters. They are good and resilient, they can stand loss without it irreparably scorching their souls.”

“I know,” Galadriel said, but she was thinking a million things at the same time, very much on her own trajectory.

Mairon let her cycle through her emotions at her own pace and did not flinch when she jumped from one concern to the next.

"Are we making a mistake here? Reigning over mortals?” She asked. “Maybe that is why I am so unsettled. Maybe living among them is scorching my soul? – And on top of this, we have a couple more hundred years until something needs to happen. We need a solution on what to tell them regarding your… longevity.” She turned around in his arms to stare at the ceiling. “Perhaps it would be better to hand the kingdom over to men?”

"And what would we do then?” Mairon chuckled, not taking her very seriously it seemed. “Retire?”

"Or create a new realm?” She offered, rolling to her side and leaning on her elbow to look at him. “One of elves? Then we could get our children back?”

"Elves who would follow us if they knew who I am?” He challenged.

"You are not… you are not that anymore,” she said, although she didn't know if she was trying to convince him or herself. “They will see. They will all see.”

"Let us cross that bridge when we get there, yes? Let us not worry about anything but us, not tonight.” He smoothed a strand of her hair out of her forehead. “For now, let me tell you what I would do when I lost someone I did end up caring about… during my time among mortals.”

"Did you dream up worlds?” Galadriel asked with a small smile, remembering the little night time game he would play with their children.

"Sometimes,” he murmured and leaned in close. “I would drive myself to distraction.” He lowered his eyes, looking up at her from under thick lashes with a smouldering glance. “I could do the same for you.”

"How would you seek to distract me, then?” Galadriel asked, although she knew the answer – and he did not let her wait long to prove her right.

Falling apart in his arms finally felt like coming home again.

***

Mairon used this specific tactic a lot in the years to come and Galadriel did not mind it at all. Lying with him was the one thing that would guarantee her solace and the distraction he had promised. She enjoyed his affections even more when he used a bit of his remaining magic to make sure she would not fall pregnant again – because Galadriel had no interest in a third pregnancy.

Visiting the children which they already had in daydreams was the other way she could alleviate her lingering worries. They remained as she had observed them earlier, largely unburdened. Mairon was right about them being resilient, because even though they were in Greenwood, life was not always just easy for them. But they did not seem to have altered, darkened tempers through any of the hardships they faced away from home. They were even-keeled as much as their different personalities allowed – so Emil a bit more so than Meira. But if anything, Mairon was pleased and used their development as a constant source of reassurance for his wife, although he complained that he could not visit the children in the same manner that Galadriel could and witness their progress.

But then one fine year, Meira and Emil were instructed in the ways of building their own mind bridges and then they could visit their father on their own accord. It was almost like they were still with them this way, though Galadriel still rejoiced whenever they did come home for a visit. Getting to hold them close to her heart was incomparable. Seeing how tall they got, year after year, was more immediate to fathom in person.

And much like their prince and princess, Galador grew and grew. Sixty years passed around Galadriel and Mairon, the kingdom solidifying, ever more villages and towns being raised, more roads being laid out to link them all together. The orcs dug deeper into their mountains and the friendship with Gondor grew through marriages between the families of the courts. Trade flourished between the Southlands and all their neighbours.

Mairon was settled, Sauron fully dormant if not fully defeated inside him. Whenever the king proposed a solution to a problem that bordered on megalomania, he let Galadriel dissuade him from it, usually with little more than a raised eyebrow on her. He reminded her of a feral kitten she had once fostered in Halindon, like that. It had hissed and scratched at her the first couple of weeks that Galadriel took care of it – but after enough time had passed and once the kitten learned that Galadriel would feed it and cuddle it and keep it happy, it was docile, domesticated. It had everything it needed, so it did not fight her anymore.

Mairon was the same way. He did not fight anymore. He still had a will to power, he would always have that, but as it was, he was content knowing their friends' decisions were made entirely in line with their own interests. Isildur and his heirs were basically his creatures anyway, Elrond would never move against Galadriel, much like Durin would never move against Elrond – and they had entered into a strong trading relationship with the orcs, which made both these kinds less likely to cause trouble.

Middle Earth was peaceful and prosperous – much like King Halbrand had promised. Middle Earth was healed… much like Sauron had set out to make it. He was happy, he was not looking for doom around every corner. That was just his wife. And their subjects grew older and multiplied, a new generation grew up unburdened by war. They created traditions, made music and wrote poetry and plays. They trained for combat not thinking they would ever need those skills. They were calling their age Golden – later it would be known as the hundred year peace.

Everything was fine. Everything should be fine. Galadriel even grew ever more certain that her children were not the source of her fears, mostly because her dreams seemed to pull her towards the sea. She did not feel the shadow lurking in the mirky parts of Greenwood, she felt it beyond the ocean. And she tried still, ever vigilant, to keep from looking too hard at it, still half believing that it was all just in her mind, just a manifestation of her grief, like Mairon had once theorised – but one night she could not run away from it anymore. The shadow found her, drenched in sweat and when her husband tried to wake her up from her thrashing, she reflexively straddled him in terror and choked him before she was even fully awake.

A few days later, her husband found her wandering around in the woods as the first spring flowers bloomed at the trees slowly sprouted new leaves.

"I think you should go to Númenor,” he told her after a while of quietly walking side by side with her, back towards the city.

She looked at him, eyes wide.

“I know you have been having more of your nightmares lately… and you whisper in Adûnaic in your sleep.” The ancient language of Númenor. “We both know it’s the only place the shadow could still be hiding. It is not our children, I can tell you this with all of my certainty. Whenever they visit me, I am inside their minds and there is no trace of that darkness you so fear. – And you won’t rest until you go out there and see for yourself if the source of it all hides on the island.”

“But do you not feel it, too?” She asked him, glancing sideways at him, focusing on a new laughter line that had appeared some three years ago next to his right eye to keep her settled. “Might I just be… losing my mind?”

“I feel the darkness always,” he told her evenly. “The small evil of this world and mostly the great evil not of this world. – It still calls to me, always has. I can scarcely place where it comes from unless it is very loud and very distinct. You are different, you are such light, if anyone can make out a spot of shade on the sun, it is you. So, sail South. Look for it. If it is there, you will find it.”

"I don’t know if I can do this without you.” She sighed, knowing he was right but entirely unwilling to chase darkness without him.

“You can do everything,” he told her reassuringly. “Remember you were chasing after me by yourself for a thousand years, perfectly content.”

“And I found you when I was not looking,” she reminded him. “Maybe I am not meant to go search for darkness, maybe it is meant to find me.”

“Maybe.” He nodded. “But I know I can’t watch you go through this any longer. You try so hard to stay the course, you're forbidding yourself to follow the dark because I made you feel like it might not be real. I am sorry for that. – And it needs to end.  It kills me that I cannot help you. If I could still leave this body, I would cover the earth and look myself, but I can’t. So, please… at least think about it. If not for you, then for Middle Earth. And if not for Middle Earth, then for me.”

In the end however, it was their son who convinced her to go.

***

He visited her after what must have been a lengthy conversation with his father, his face longer and leaner than it had been the last time she had seen him, looking more and more like Mairon by the visit – although Emil was not growing a beard and his hair were long, of her own shade, and straight. In any case, his handsome, almost grown-up face was almost regal, and matched his quiet wisdom more than his childhood countenance had.

“Father tells me you are to set out to Númenor?” He asked her, his voice low and manly in a way that still took some getting used to for her. She could hardly tell when her children had grown up this much.

“I have not yet decided on it,” she replied.

She didn’t know if she had the strength to go look for doom again after so many happy years – because they had been happy, even if she had spent some of them afraid of the dark, she had still known as deep a peace as she ever had. What if chasing down peril would destroy all of it?

“You know you should go,” he said. “The white tree is close to falling into the sea.”

Galadriel gasped. “How did you know about the tree?”

“I have been seeing your dreams for a long time, mother, longer than I can fully remember.”

Galadriel had to sit down somewhere, hit with a pang of guilt upon his words. She should have known! He had seen it all this time and had kept it to himself to spare her! Likely since that time he drew Mordor and the flaming eye and her reaction was one of such poorly hidden panic.

“I am so sorry,” she muttered tonelessly, close to tears. “I tried to shield you from them.”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” he said evenly. “I was never afraid. – You are always in those dreams, and I am not afraid when you are with me, not anywhere.”

She swallowed past a thick lump in her throat, looking back up at her wise, grown son, who loved her so.

“Go to Númenor,” he insisted. “Before it’s too late.”

And how could she refuse him anything?

***

King Isildur, now 110 years old, agreed with King Halbrand’s and Queen Galadriel’s assessment that Númenor could do with another envoy from Middle Earth, especially since it had been a couple of years since Celeborn, Thranduil and the wizards had reported back any news from the state of the island.

Which was why Isil had decreed that his second and third sons, Aratan and Ciryon, would accompany Galadriel with a ship and battalion of a hundred soldiers each, just to be prepared for whatever may await them, and once this decision was made, Galadriel had naught but a fortnight to get her affairs in Galador in order and then set out for Gondor.

Mairon rode as far as half a day out with her towards his friend’s kingdom before they both dismounted their horses to say goodbye.

“This will be the longest we have been apart in a century,” she said.

“Well, you know where to find me, you can visit me in daydreams whenever you please” he said easily. “Or you could always open your mind to me.”

She frowned at him. “I tried before, you know it does not work with you.”

“Try again,” he suggested.

And she could feel him reach out once more, pull on her mind as if with tendrils and she tried to open his mind for him then, to hook on to those very tendrils and allow them to grow through the foundation of the wall she had put up for him many many years ago.

There was a glimpse of him in her head, his energy that she knew like the back of her hand, but stronger, more pronounced. She held on to it, pulled it in, opened a door inside her willingly, breaking down that very last barrier because she realised much to her surprise that now she could. Mairon’s eyes went large as he let out a startled gasp, feeling what she was doing.

“There you are,” he murmured finally and then pulled her in harshly to kiss her as their minds melded together. When he let her go, his eyes were glazed over and his voice sounded reverent, breathless. “There’s so much more light than I thought. – I’ll hold on to this while you’re gone.”

Galadriel smiled, wondering why she had not been able to let him in like this for so long. Or why she dimly remembered that she was not supposed to – because she knew there was nothing to be afraid of there. She knew him as well as she knew herself by now and he had never kept himself hidden from her, not the way he truly was. Bridging their minds like this felt not much different than lying with him did, only less distracting… but their connection was the same. It was nothing to be scared off. If anything it would keep her sane when she would venture out to sea to shadow-hunt.

“And I’ll hold onto you,” she told him, smiling softly. “Keep our home safe while I am gone.”

He nodded. “Return to me and you have a deal.”

She chuckled lightly, but promised it to him all the same. And then they parted.

***

Galadriel arrived to Osgeliath early the next morning. She spent the day strategizing with King Isildur and his heirs, preparing for their journey which would begin the day after. Isildur was apprehensive about sending two of his sons and Galadriel thought she should have come sooner. The King of Gondor seemed to be more of her own mind than her own husband, more worried about what was brewing in the island kingdom.

“I have had terrible dreams,” Isil confided in her after dinner as he saw her off to her quarters. “Númenor sinking into the sea, so many people dying…”

Galadriel could do little else than tell him she understood, only mildly surprised that the exiled Númenorian had been sent prophetic dreams of his home’s demise as well, although it helped to explain his urgency, seeing that he was plagued by the same dreams that made her nights short and torturous too.

The eve of their parting held the worst of the dreams for them yet, however. Galadriel saw burning bodies and then a giant wave tearing into ancient stones, blasting them apart by a might that could not be contented with. She saw people scrambling for boats, terrified and injured, and she heard laughter – malicious, low, rumbling, and awful. It was this laughter more than the anguished screams that made her sit up screaming in her bed in the dead of night, crying out in terror.

She did her best to look presentable the next morning, taking care to look to the soldiers that would follow her and Isildur’s heirs to Númenor, that she was someone they could follow. That she wasn’t afraid – even if this was hardly true. But as she stood on the pier, talking to Prince Ciryon, something caught her attention on the horizon. She saw it before anyone else did and knew exactly what to tell the king when he came down from the palace to find out what had his army on high alert.

It was a single ship flying the Gondorian flag, tattered and overcrowded. From afar, Galadriel could make out blonde and grey hair at the bow – Celeborn, Thranduil, and the wizards, and behind them, terrified refugees.

“What is the meaning of this?” King Isildur asked beside her.

“Our nightmares have come true,” she said, more sure than she had ever been of anything – the darkness was singing beyond the horizon, reaching across the sea to her.

Emil’s warning had been for naught. Galadriel had come too late.

“Númenor has fallen.”

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE: YESTARE

Galadriel barely knew how they managed to get the returned into Osgiliath’s palace and into the council room through the sheer chaos that erupted among the Gondorians after the ships docked. The news of Númenor’s demise travelled like wildfire through the narrow alleys and broad roads of the city.

Galadriel had kept in the background, behind the king. She knew both Thranduil and her first husband were not keen on seeing her and the two elves did not betray any particular emotion when it transpired that she had been about to set out for the island kingdom, not that she could fault them for being preoccupied with other matters at present.

She had not expected gratitude, mostly because she had the good sense to understand that her efforts must have seemed about five or six decades too late. Even more so, when very quickly into their debriefing in the council room it became apparent that the four Middle Earthers had spent the last forty years in different Nùmenorian dungeons.

The gist of their report was that after round-about sixty years of trying in various ways to usurp Chancellor Pharazon’s reign, they had eventually been found out and sentenced to prison. They had been separated to ensure no further plotting, which had resulted in Celeborn and Mithrandir being locked away in the capitol while Thranduil and Saruman wound up on the other side of the island – all of them without their normal means of communications, kept from it by magic.

It was Celeborn, in the end, who managed to escape just in the nick of time to collect the others and try to avert the doom that befell the kingdom. They came too late. For the Chancellor had fallen under the spell of a dark spirit, or so it was said, a darkness that made him paranoid and volatile. Mithrandir explained his certainty that it was no ordinary evil that had made its way to the island, rather that it was Morgoth himself who had poisoned the Númenorian – but Celeborn and Thranduil did not seem to share in this theory.

They remained that Morgoth was gone, as neither of them could feel his presence. Galadriel doubted Mithrandir’s words as well, mainly because she failed to see why, if Morgoth truly had found a way to assert his power from beyond the Void, he would set his sights on Númenor, rather than Middle Earth, where no one lesser than Sauron had amassed significant power in the last century. But Mairon had remained staunchly on the right path and she would know if he had been tempted by his erstwhile master.

So, the elves, and Isildur along with them, cast aside the grey wizard’s claims and focused instead on the other evil, for there was still darkness in the world and Morgoth did not have a monopoly on it, though surely it begged the question who else was to blame. Thranduil suspected a dragon, though even though he had searched the island high and lo for such a monster while he was still free to roam about, he had never found one. The King of the Greenwood said this quietly, pointedly not looking at Galadriel, as if he expected her to challenge him on it.

Whenever she met him, she was astounded by the measure of his dislike of her simply by merit of her birth and it was her intuition to glance at Celeborn to find some solidarity in her irk about it – as they had shared it thus earlier in their history – but now her first husband stared stoically ahead, leaving her to sit in the discomfort of being so disliked by herself. And being disliked by Celeborn just the same, though she knew that he had ample reason to do so. Which was still more than could be said about Thranduil. In any case, it was an ancient hatred he harboured for her and it made no matter at present, so Galadriel shook off her misgivings about those he held for her and let Isildur lead the conversation.

“So, it was due to your prisons that you could not reach out to us” the king asked to confirm which they did by nodding in unison. “And when you finally freed yourselves, it was too late?”

“All we could do was get as many souls onto the boats as we could,” replied Saruman. “It was not enough.”

“And the chancellor?” Isildur asked.

“Perished in his temple,” Celeborn said grimly. “Laughing himself to death.”

Galadriel shuddered, remembering the gruelling laugh she had heard in her dream the previous night… so it had been the Chancellor himself who had made that ghastly sound, driven to madness by the destruction he had brought onto his own people.

“But why…?” Isildur glanced from man to man. “How could our island just fall into the sea? Did Pharazon use magic to destroy it himself, was he that mad?”

“I do not see how he could,” Thranduil mused. “Gandalf has his own ideas.”

“Not ideas,” corrected Mithrandir solemnly. “I am sure it was the Valar – as retribution.”

“This was what the Palantir also suggested,” Galadriel agreed. “That if Nùmenor strayed too far from their bonds, she would be punished. Locking up two elves and two Istar for decades would likely count as such in the best of circumstances.”

“And there was the matter of the sacrifices,” Saruman added, which made Isildur perk up and the wizard elaborate: “When the White Tree lost all of its petals, a terrible drought befell the kingdom and the fishes disappeared from the currents. After a couple of years of this, Pharazon started sacrificing virgins to his evil spirits. When nothing changed, eventually, he set his sights on the children.”

Isildur drew in a sharp breath but Saruman continued laying out what had happened.

“A week before Celeborn came to our rescue, there was a ceremony… a terrible ritual where forty children were given to the flames. Gandalf believes that this was the final affront to the Valar and they took the island back.”

The Gondorian king swallowed back what must have been bile, collected himself for a moment and then asked if there were any men or women among the refugees who had supported such gruesome and inhumane methods.

“Those we brought with us where the ones loyal to the old ways, who worked in the shadows against Chancellor Pharazon’s rule of terror,” Mithrandir promised and Isildur relaxed slightly.

“What is there left to do then? Now?” He asked sincerely and Galadriel was glad that he did not address her with this, because she had no idea what to tell him.

“I am afraid there is not much,” Thranduil answered. “We have returned those deserving few back to your fold. So, it is now on Gondor to welcome its sons and daughters and heal. As for us, we shall return to our kin and convene to learn what darkness befell Nùmenor and where it still lingers. If there is indeed a dragon, he might be hiding in these parts.”

“What about Sauron?” Isildur asked, looking to Galadriel for the first time, which made her half-choke on a piece of lembas bread she was absent-mindedly nibbling on. “Lady Galadriel, did you not come to Middle Earth searching for him – what if he is the one to blame, what if he poisoned Pharazon’s mind? What if he is not dead, like everyone believes?”

Galadriel cleared her throat uneasily and forced herself to breathe normally.

“I do not think so,” she said eventually, after feigning deep thought for a while. “I think if he survived, which is doubtful after so many centuries, he would do as Adar has done, try and gain control over Middle Earth. Why would he bother with Nùmenor? – I think Sauron is gone.”

“I never would have thought to hear those words out of your stubborn mouth, Commander Galadriel,” Thranduil said and it sounded like an insult, which she was sure was precisely his intention. “Was it not you who spent a millennium wasting good soldiers on your pursuit of naught but a whisper of him? Now you would so confidently declare him diminished?”

“Of course I cannot be sure,” Galadriel hurried to say, feeling the top of her ears turn red. “And I would never presume to be. If it pleases Elrond, I will assemble a new host, if need be comprised of only Southlanders and resume my search.”

“We shall discuss it with the High King,” Thranduil nodded and seemed pleased to have called her out in front of the others. “Celeborn and I have much to discuss with him. We will travel to Lindon after a visit to the Greenwood. My wife expects me – as do your children, she tells me.”

Galadriel knew better than to challenge him. It was a wonder that he had even gone this far, as good as inviting her to join them on their journey to Greenwood and she was not about to forgo this invitation. One, because she knew she had to get to work on dissuading both him and Celeborn from their suspicion of Sauron, and because she desperately wanted to see her children again. So she just nodded at Thranduil and then faded into the background again, letting the others make their plans without her.

After another hour of that, the council room emptied. The elves would depart for Greenwood the following morning, while Saruman and Mithrandir would return to Isengard where Saruman had abandoned construction of his fortress in Nan Curunír, at the southern tip of the Misty Mountains. This left Isildur to contend with the traumatised refugees and those Nùmenorians who still remembered their old kingdom, just as upheaved by the loss of their home.

Galadriel lingered, waiting until the room had cleared but for the two of them and turned to face him, wanting to offer some solace, or at least an apology.

“I am sorry that I did not come sooner,” she told him, heartbroken.

“You could not have known,” he said quietly and looked past her, his eyes glassy. “You had a kingdom to attend to. My people are not your concern.”

“But they are,” she insisted. “We are sister kingdoms, Gondor and the Southlands… I should have been there.”

“Nùmenor is not Gondor,” he reminded her. “In the end, those who chose loyalty with the Chancellor over loyalty to Queen Miriel and our family, had their own hand in their destiny. Now all that is left for me to do is to ensure those who returned are not left alone to contend with their grief.”

“This seems to be a uniting aspect of reigning,” Galadriel mused. “Contending with grief. It seems this is all I have done for the last fifty years. – Though more my own than my people’s.”

“They keep insisting on dying, do they not, those mortals?” Isildur gave her a sad little smile. “I must admit, I keep my council largely among my own kin, just for longevity’s sake… but as good as half of my kingdom is purely human. As there is intermingling, we grow older, but I expect a good portion of us will keep being awfully quick to return to the earth from which they came.”

“We should introduce more of your blood to our kingdom,” Galadriel mused, out of pure selfishness. “Or at least the court. For longevity’s sake.”

“You will not hear me complaining about tying our houses closer together.” Isildur shrugged. “Though it is a admittedly a bit of a hard sell, convincing my people to marry humans. Enough do it here because people in love are stubborn and love happens where it may… but I do not know if I can force anyone. Perhaps another celebration of our kingdom’s friendship is in order… to foster firmer bonds. Though we need to wait a while, after this tragedy. In the meantime, perhaps we can discuss other ways to cement our relationships. Your children are grown now, are they not?”

Galadriel paused. Took a breath. This had not been her intention, though she thought she only had herself to blame. She had just floated the idea of taking some of the Andúnië just so she would experience loss at court a little less frequently and had earned herself Isildur floating anew the idea of joining their royal households – she should have expected this precise outcome. Which still posed the same problems that his father’s idea to marry Eärien to King Halbrand had back in the day. Isildur might give one of his daughters to Emil or make a bid for Meira’s hand on one of his heir’s behalf, but they would outlive their spouses just the same.

Now, even the Gondorians would not live to see it and wonder, but her children would experience the greatest grief still. Galadriel wanted to have them wedded to elves for that simple reason, though she did not know how to tell Isildur this. She could not tell him the truth but she also did not know if it would offend him if she told him her children were promised to elves, worried this might suggest they wanted to bind the Southlands closer to the elven kingdoms than to his own.

For now, Galadriel decided to play for time, so she merely shrugged noncommittally with a small smile.

“I suppose we will have to ask our children,” she said. “They have grown up almost as cousins, so there is a familiarity. – I will have a talk with Meira and Emil when I see them in Greenwood.”

“Very well.” Isildur nodded. “How long has it been since you have seen them?”

“In person, it will have been around twenty years,” she said and felt her heart ache at the mere mention.

“Then you must be really excited.” Another little smile. “I am happy for you.”

Galadriel was happy, too. She was so happy, she did not even have a nightmare. She was so happy, she almost forgot all about Nùmenor, almost forgot to bridge her mind to her husband’s and tell him everything she learned and inform him that instead of travelling to the drowned island, she would be going to Greenwood to see their children. Mairon listened to all of this, appearing to her in her dreams, and she could feel his worry, though he sought to mask it from her.

“The most important thing is that no one gets any ideas of looking for you,” she said, though this did not seem to be what worried him.

“I doubt anyone would succeed in this endeavour, not when you could not find me in hundreds and hundreds of years,” he said and she made sure he felt that this comment unnerved her. “Only the better for us now,” he brought back to mind, trying to appease her, and she knew better than to linger on the past.

“Then why are you so troubled?” She asked until it dawned on her. “The dark spirit… you do not think Mithrandir is right, do you? About Morgoth?”

“I do not know,” Mairon admitted and though his voice in her head was steady, his emotions were not. They flickered with uncertainty and something akin to fear. She could feel them as if they were her own. “Like I told you before you left, I feel the remnants of him still, may that be from the Void or not. I could not say – and that is what worries me. – Be swift with your visit, yes? And bring our children home.”

“I will try.” Galadriel sighed, reminding him with a couple flashes of memories of their children that they were not ones to be ordered around. “If they wish to come with me, I will return them to you.”

“Alright.” He sent a wave of comfort and love through their connection, which warmed her and would do its part to keep the darkness at bay for the rest of her night. “Don’t take too long, I miss you.”

“And I you,” she assured him, and then she let him be.

***

In the morning, after a warm goodbye to the king and his family, Galadriel soon found herself back on horseback, on the path to the Greenwood. And once Mithrandir and Saruman had broken from the group and Galadriel was left alone with Thranduil and Celeborn, the full weight of their disdain for her sunk in, a stark contrast to the warm friendship she had felt in Osgiliath. For a whole day and layover night, neither of the elves even spoke to her other than the absolute bare necessities. It was not until they had entered the Greenwood itself and were firmly en route to Thranduil’s seat, that Celeborn brought his steed to the height of hers and engaged her in some cordial conversation.

Galadriel tried hard not to sigh in relief. As much as she did not regret her decisions, she did not like being treated with open hostility, especially when she knew it was unwise to return it in kind. Mairon had taught her that.

She asked Celeborn some details about Númenor, though he was not very elaborate, which was not surprising. Firstly, because he was still visibly shaken from all that had transpired, secondly because the times when he would have fully opened up to her were long since past. But Galadriel still tried to offer some comfort at least. And somewhat of an apology she felt she owed – despite what Isildur had said, seeking to absolve her from her guilt.

"I cannot imagine what it must have been like, watching the island drown like that. I am sorry your travels did not reap greater benefits – but it was an honourable thing of you to go,” she said and then added in a slightly sheepish tone: “Maybe I could have done more, if I had come sooner.”

"You were otherwise occupied,” he said curtly, echoing Isildur’s sentiments, though the King of Gondor had sounded a lot more gracious as he had voiced them.

"I know, but–” She tried, he did not let her finish.

"–I will not ease any more of your preoccupations. You have made your choices, Galadriel. Now we all live with them.” Celeborn stared blankly ahead, tugging at his horse’s reins to slow him down a little and paused for a long moment and then she could feel his stare as he turned to face her. “Your husband… he gave you leave to travel to Númenor by yourself?”

"My husband is in no position to give me leave to do anything,” she corrected, mindful to keep the edge she felt out of her words. “He encouraged me to go. – Much like you used to.”

"He must have learned that you cannot be kept still. You are not made for a steady home. I always felt like you had some inner need of peril.” He looked away, musing. “Though you have lasted long by his side, have you not?”

"A little over a century now,” she answered, sounding pricklier than she wanted to, but she could not help it, something about his inflection unnerved her.

"He must be special,” Celeborn continued much in the same way. “Considering he is but an half-elven bastard.”

"A king by blood,” she replied tightly.

"Is that so?” Celeborn challenged. “I could find no trace of his ancestors in the Hall of Lore in Númenor.”

Galadriel paused, she did not like the implication that Celeborn had gone looking for Mairon’s pretend ancestry and she sat forward on her saddle, intent on dispelling any doubts regarding her husband’s identity, as she had promised she would.

"There was a scroll in the library in Eregion detailing his birth. Elrond has seen it,” she said quickly. “Why do you care about my husband’s lineage?”

"Can you blame me?” Celeborn shot back. “You left me for him. Broke a vow that should be unbreakable… I merely sought to know what set him apart.”

"I did not leave you for him,” she corrected, because responding to his hurt pride seemed more wise than to linger on the subject of Halbrand from the Southlands. “I fell in love with him when I believed you dead.”

"Which would not have changed a thing.” he reminded her, and rightfully so.

Because they both knew in the Elvish tradition, marriages were supposed to outlast their mortal bodies. Their spirits would have been reunited in Aman, but Galadriel had forsaken that union.

Celeborn looked to her once more. “Like I said. He must be special.”

With that, he gave his horse its head and rode ahead of her to join Thranduil who looked back over his shoulder at her like he would prefer it if she were a few leagues further behind them yet. Galadriel let out a deep breath and braved it. No more than an hour and she would see her children again – that would make every snide glance worth it.

She was looking forward to surprising them because she had purposely not contacted them to confirm she was on her way. Of course, once they finally arrived at the king’s seat, she could see them waiting along with Queen Calathiel and her sons and she knew that Thranduil must have alerted his wife to all of their arrivals. Naturally, he did not care to preserve any happiness of a lovely surprise, neither for Galadriel, nor her children. It did not dampen her joy of seeing them again, however.

Galadriel dismounted from her steed dexterously as soon as she was close enough and before she could take more than a few steps, her children had run to her and flung themselves at her. Two pairs of arms slung around her frame and she opened her own as wide as she could to fit both of her grow-up children into her embrace.

She had a hard time keeping tears at bay but she struggled through it, pressed them close, her head caught between Meira’s dark curls and Emil’s straight blonde hair. Before she really looked at them, she noted how different they smelled. Not like the kids she had known… Meira’s skin was fragrant, like early spring flowers, and Emil smelled of earth and musk, much like his father. She sighed, pressed them close for one last squeeze and then leaned back, one hand on each of her children’s shoulders.

“Let me look at you,” she said and her eyes darted from one child to the other. “My, how you’ve grown.”

Somehow they had seemed younger in her mind whenever they met, maybe because it never fully translated how tall they had become. Meira was of her height now and Emil was a few inches taller than Mairon, lankier and of a more sinewy frame. And while Meira’s cheeks were still a little more youthfully full, Emil’s jaw was cutting, more pronounced than she would have expected. They were also both paler than they had been as children in the Southlands, out in the sun all day. Here, under the canopy of the forest, they had turned alabaster, both their hazel and blue eyes looking more startling for it.

Galadriel's glance flickered back to Calathiel and her two blonde sons for a moment, long enough to see that Emil, especially dressed in the same woodland elf garb, had the look of a brother or cousin. Meira wore a muted lavender-coloured dress in the style that Calathiel wore, much more elaborate than anything even Galadriel would wear in their own kingdom. Her children were completely assimilated to their surroundings and she did not fully understand why, but the sight of it gave her a little pang. Still she smiled brightly at both of them, her heart afloat with the reunion.

“How are you?” She asked them and they both smiled, assuring her that they were fine.

“Brilliant, now that you are here,” added Emil.

“How long will you stay?” Meira asked.

"That depends,” Galadriel replied, “your father and I were hoping that maybe you would want to return back home with me. Only, if you feel ready to, of course.”

Neither of her kids seemed to want to commit to a yes at that point, but Galadriel figured it was to be expected, seeing that she had just sprung the suggestion on them rather suddenly.

"How is Papa?” Meira asked.

"Good,” Galadriel affirmed. “He misses you though, both of you.”

"We cannot return before the Yestare Festival,” Meira told her with somewhat of a frown, like she feared Galadriel wanted to drag them back home right that second. “There is a competition–”

“–To ring in the New Year and celebrate the dawn of spring with an athletic tournament, I know.” Galadriel nodded. “I have attended a number of them when Calathiel still competed. – I take it, it is now your turn?”

“I am competing,” Meira said and tipped her head to Emil with a frown. “He is sitting it out. He is afraid he’ll lose to me.”

“On the contrary,” Emil scoffed, raising an eyebrow in a way that made him look a lot like his father. “I merely have no interest in childish competitions that are essentially meaningless at the end of the day.”

"Of course you don’t,” Meira deadpanned, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I am going to win, I know it. Laindawar claims he will win like he did last year but I told him, he will not. I am a faster runner and a way better archer.”

Emil huffed and lowered his voice, speaking conspiratorially to Galadriel: “She thinks besting him will impress him, I told her it will likely achieve the opposite – but she is stubborn. She thinks he’ll fall in love with her if–”

"–You be quiet!” Meira interjected, her cheeks blushing violently, and attempted to elbow him in the side – but he had quicker reflexes and stepped out of reach.

"It’s the truth, he won’t suffer losing to you,” Emil insisted. “Also he prefers Edhelvain over you in any case. And Edhelvain is faster than you.”

"No, she is not,” Meira shot back.

"She is an elf,” Emil said. “We are mutts.”

Galadriel drew in a sharp breath and held up her hand to stop her children’s bickering. “Who called you that?”

"No one,” Meira groaned, as if she was annoyed with her little brother for divulging this information to their mother. “Not to our faces at least.”

"But they are thinking it and making little effort to conceal the thought,” Emil said. “They think because we are half-human we should be weaker than them.”

"You are not mutts,” said Galadriel, her frown a mirror of her daughter’s.

"We’re not elves,” Meira said and then looked back at her brother. “And we are not weaker than them.”

"Because we’re not half-human either,” Emil grumbled and Galadriel’s world stopped turning for a second.

"What are you talking about?” She snapped before it fully registered what had just happened – that her children apparently had an inkling that they were not, in fact, what she and their father had let them believe all their lives.

"Mama.” Meira sighed. It sounded like Do not even try.

"You will tell us when it is time.” Emil shrugged, seemingly more worried about Galadriel who felt the blood drain from her face, than to get answers.

Meira seemed equally as occupied with other matters than that of her birth. “Edhelvain is only faster than me because father dulled my strength.”

Galadriel nearly tripped backward, suddenly so weak on her feet that Emil had to steady her.

How did they know?! How could they know about this?

"Let us not talk further about this here,” she hurried to say, worried that anyone other than the three of them might hear, even though a quick cursory glance beyond the children told her that Calathiel and her children were still busy welcoming back King Thranduil and Lord Celeborn.

"I told you she would not tell us yet.” Emil shrugged easily, turning to Meira who made the same face as him - unperturbed, of if anything merely slightly annoyed. Galadriel was at a complete loss of what to do about this.

"Once you are back home, we will discuss this,” she promised, willing her heart to temper down. “When your father is there, too.”

***

Reuniting with Calathiel should have been a joyous moment but it was overshadowed by Galadriel’s worry about what had just transpired with the children. As the Queen of the Southlands gathered the Queen of the Greenwood into her arms and asked politely of her well-being, Galadriel thought of nothing but what it meant that her kids had some idea of their patronage being something other than they had been made to believe. She was incredibly worried that Meira and Emil were not the only ones who suspected it – but as they were welcomed into the palace and the day dragged on, she saw no hint of suspicion from anyone else.

Galadriel allowed herself to relax only when the new day came and still nothing terrible happened. Her children were in high spirits and with the worry of their detection slowly fading as the beautiful spring morning blossomed into an unseasonably warm day, she finally fully settled in to her visit of the Greenwood. She took a long walk with Calathiel and listened to her praise Meira and Emil for a good hour.

Calathiel was impressed with Emil’s good sense and gentle manner and appreciative of Meira’s self-assuredness and wit. She did not let on too much that she knew of the infatuation Meira had with her eldest son – something Emil had alluded to and Galadriel herself had picked up on fairly easily in the morning, watching them together. But Calathiel did dance around the topic of joining houses, which made this the second monarch in little more than as many days who suggested such a thing.

Though if anything, navigating this proposal was even harder than the one Isildur had made. Because a marriage with an elf would mean both a change of true lasting happiness for her children as well as definite detection of their immortality. Something had to give eventually and being without Mairon at present made it hard to know what to do about it all. So again, she opted to postpone the issue.

“Of course these are not matters to be decided on right away,” Calathiel remarked as they paused their walk on a high bridge, spun across the treetops overlooking the town. “And the children will have their say in it in any case.”

“As will Thranduil, I imagine,” Galadriel replied, voicing the only gripe about the idea that was safe to.

“He would come around to it,” Calathiel promised.

“He has not in centuries,” Galadriel reminded her. “At least not to me.”

“He married me even though you raised me,” her ward insisted. “He knows ancient traditions, as well as enmities, are no match for true love. And he did just spend a hundred years in the company of your hu– of Celeborn, despite his birth.”

Galadriel drew in a sharp breath at this mention. She had not discussed the matter of Celeborn with Calathiel yet. It had not come up – mostly because Galadriel had always made sure it didn't. She tried to do the same thing now but Calathiel for once would not allow it.

“It must be strange, having two husbands,” she said carefully.

“I do not–” Galadriel stopped herself, not really knowing how she would finish this thought. “I did not intend for any of this to happen.”

“But ancient traditions are no match for true love,” Calathiel repeated her earlier words and sighed wistfully upon seeing Galadriel'y questioning expression. “I was at your wedding, I saw the way you looked at each other. I have never seen you look at Celeborn that way, not once in all those years I lived with you. – How is he coping?”

“I do not know, if I am honest,” Galadriel said. “He does not let me see anymore. But I expect it is not easy and his time in Nùmenor… well, it does not seem to have dulled the misgivings.”

“Not that he would be to blame,” Calathiel said, a slight reprimand in her tone somewhere which upset a bit of the mother-daughter dynamic that had existed between them for as long as they knew each other.

Galadriel accepted that she deserved at least some of that scorn – both Calathiel’s, well hidden as it was, as well as Celeborn’s – so she left it at that.

***

By nightfall, on the eve of the New Year’s festivities, Celeborn had taken to staying in the opposite corner of every space they happened to share and other than watching her children with some disdain, he did not cross their paths either, did not even introduce himself to them. Galadriel accepted this, too. She did not insist on politeness, imagining that her first husband would look upon her children and see them as what they were: the personifications of Galadriel’s love for another.

Meira and Emil in turn had little interest in the other elf. They knew of him in broad strokes and she imagined they had heard rumours, some likely disparaging ones about their mother in conjunction with him, and they stayed away from those as well as they could – she knew her children well enough to be sure of this. Though aside from skirting Celeborn, they were both busy with the upcoming competition. Meira more so than her brother, and enough to make her turn in early to get a good long night of sleep.

Emil sat at one of the carved tables next to his mother and watched with her as Meira crossed the lively meadow Meira left behind her to retire to her quarters, but not without bidding Laindawar, Calathiel’s oldest, goodnight.

“She will get her heart broken,” her son mused, looking after her.

“What makes you so sure?” Galadriel asked.

“He does not like her the way she likes him,” Emil said. “She thinks winning the competition will change that but it won’t.”

“Well, we will see about that in the morning,” Galadriel said. “And if she gets hurt or loses, we will be there to console her, won’t we?”

“She won’t lose,” Emil promised – but instead of confidence in his sister’s abilities, it sounded more like a grim promise.

***

The next day, Galadriel understood her son’s sullen expression as he had predicted his sister’s win. Because that win came at a cost. Galadriel and Emil sat on the sidelines on the viewing platform at the competition ground’s edge, though most of the tournament would take place in the woods, outside of spectator’s prying eyes. Galadriel knew every step her daughter took still, because she let her see through her eyes. Which was why she had a prime seat to Meira losing her temper.

It was on the fourth and last set of contests – Meira had two wins under her belt, Laindawar had two as well, as did Edhelvain. It was the latter gaining traction on Meira during the final sprint that would decide the overall win, which put Meira on edge. Galadriel sat up, cautioning Meira to calm down through their mind’s connection but all Galadriel saw in her daughter’s head was Edhelvain’s ginger curls flowing in the wind as she threatened to take Meira over – and the colour of crimson rage.

The next alarming  thing was feeling through her daughter’s body as Meira tested at the limits on her strength, the ones that Mairon had placed on them. Galadriel could follow along as Meira felt out the edges of the glimmer, as if shoving a finger between an ajar door and pushing.

Don’t, she warned her daughter sharply.

She’s winning! Meira shot back through their connection.

Then let her win, Galadriel insisted, half convinced that Meira could not undo the bounds her father had put on her and half terrified that she could.

No, Meira thought, all stubborn determination, and at the same time that Edhelvain jumped across a shallow river at the bottom of a ravine, Galadriel stopped breathing, because Meira managed the unthinkable: she broke free of the glimmer out of pure spite alone!

As her full power was unleashed, Meira jumped across the chasm and landed further out than Edhelvain did and then continued blindly on, thrashing through the shrubbery. But her running was not necessarily what Galadriel was worried about. It was the change in the energy around all of them, the sudden presence of more. A strength, a current that was old and familiar to Galadriel but must have felt foreign and strange to anyone who was sensitive to such things – and most elves were.

You gained your ground, now put the bonds back in place, she ordered Meira from where she sat, her forehead set in a frown. Next to her Emil had gotten up too, his lips a thin line.

Not yet, Meira insisted and then she shut her mother out of her head.

Five minutes later, Meira broke through the brush across the meadow and gained the win of the third contest and thus the entire competition – and at the same time, she put the lid back on her own powers, like it was nothing. It was only then that Galadriel realised that Meira must have done this before – and Emil, too, most likely. She turned around to face her son.

“Is this how you two knew? About you… being different?” She asked him and watched his eyes flit to his sister.

“We figured out you did something to us before sending us away,” he said quietly, careful that no one else was paying attention to them. “But we also figured out how to undo it.”

“You should have told me!” Galadriel hissed, chastising. “We did not do this lightly, and not without proper reason. If anyone notices the change–”

“–No one did,” Emil insisted, equally as determined as his mother, his face a mirror image of hers.

Below them, Meira was being celebrated for her win as Edhelvain and Laindawar tied for second place. A look passed between them, then a grin, which said it all, and Galadriel saw it the second that Meira saw it, too – and Emil’s promise came true in its entirety.

Meira had won and she did get her heart broken, all in one fell swoop. But as much as Galadriel felt for her daughter, she was more worried that her antics had risked all of their secrets.

“It didn’t,” Emil said, as if he had heard her thoughts, which he likely had – and something about this reminded her of something, the tone of his voice, the look on his face, the way he answered a question she had not voiced aloud, but she could not put her finger on it. “No one noticed anything, no one ever does.”

“I pray that you are right, my love,” she told him and caught Meira’s glance from down below, her eyes watery.

I want to go home, Mama, she thought and Galadriel nodded at her.

She wanted nothing more than that and now it seemed most prudent and urgent, too. Best not to linger, knowing what she knew now of her children.

“It will be fine, Mama,” Emil repeated and she could hear the eye-roll more than she could see it… leave it to children to make a mother feel like an over-anxious worrier. “No one knows about us.”

Galadriel nodded and chose to believe it, if only for the moment. Then she took her son to congratulate Meira on her win and hug her tight, not for the triumph but for the heartbreak – and she held her so tight, she did not see the figure in the shadow of the large elm tree at the other side of the clearing.

She did not see him narrow his eyes at the sight of her with her kids, did not see him pull up his hood, or his features darken. She did not see him turn around, with renewed purpose, and disappear into the mirk of the woods.

***

Two days later, the Queen of the Southlands returned with the prince and princess to a great celebration in Galador. There were but a few left at court who remembered the kids as children – but their portraits had hung in the new City Hall and so there was much whispered and remarked upon how much they had grown. Mairon, who had seen them when they had bridged the physical distance between them through daydreams, still was startled too, much like Galadriel had been, seeing them in the flesh – and when he hugged them both, he held them tight for a long time before stepping back and regarding them for what must have been five solid minutes, saying nothing as they talked about the journey back from Greenwood.

They would tell them everything in the coming days and it would be two more days after that until Meira and Emil both came to terms with the revelations their parents had shared with them slowly and at length. But as such reveals went, the children seemed to stomach it all surprisingly well. – Or maybe it was not that surprising after all, giving the only world they knew.  

They knew their father, the way he was now, and had never felt anything but love and care for them and their home. Sauron was naught but a concept, stuff of legends – and those legends paled in comparison to the life they had lived, knowing him as the kind and just king that he had become. Galadriel allowed herself a sigh of relief and believed that both of them would be fine.  And for the time being, nothing else mattered. No one else had to know anything and would not need to, not for hundreds of years. And Galadriel would cross that bridge when she got there, there was no need to hurry anything along. Because surely Emil had been right, no one in Greenwood had suspected a thing – and since her children had been unmasking their true nature time and time again without even her knowing of it, she was fairly certain that they had truly gone undetected. Everything was well. Everything was in hand. Galadriel made herself be certain of it.

But then of course came the third day, when Emil barged into their bedchamber as early as the breaking of dawn, his hair tousled from tossing and turning in bed and his eyes blood-shot. And everything changed.

Galadriel knew that look. He had had one of those dreams… one of those nightmares.

“What is it?” She asked him, sitting up, instantly wide awake as Mairon righted himself next to her. “What did you see?”

Emil did not get to answer, for then a guard peeked into the King and Queen’s quarters, too, announcing that visitors of note had just passed the city gates.

“I will stay up here with father,” Emil told her, giving her a look that told her not to question her son’s intuition.

Galadriel took the long way down the stairs of the tower, feeling an overwhelming sense of unease that made her want to delay receiving her guests, though she somehow knew she could not. As she passed Meira’s chamber, her daughter emerged, looking troubled herself, as if something told her her mother had grave need of her. Meira joined Galadriel’s descent wordlessly, only dressed in a pale blue nightgown, a few shades lighter than that of her mother’s. She took Galadriel’s hand as they marched downwards. They arrived at the landing of the stairs to the White Tower moments later, the cold early morning air hitting their faces like a blow. Another moment after that, two riders crossed the town square at their fortress' feet.

Below, Galadriel watched as one of them swiftly disembarked his horse, purple robes blowing in the wind. Meira squeezed her mother’s hand. She could feel the promise of a tempest in the air just as much as Galadriel did. But she could not know what Galadriel knew, the second she caught the man’s eyes, cast in shadows. Meira had only met one of them in person before, even though she knew who the other one was, of course. He had been the one to instil in her the love of archery, after all.

“Lord Celeborn. And… the High King Elrond?” Meira muttered. “What is he doing here?”

Galadriel was certain of the answer, though she did not dare voice it out loud. She could not bear to hear the full truth, not in her own voice – not when she had been robbed of the chance to tell her best friend in her own words. Still, it did not cease to be the fact of the matter.

He knows, she thought, alarmed, and it felt like all of her fears she had pushed aside distilled down to this very moment. Elrond knows about Sauron.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX: KING MAIRON

Eventhough Meira was adamant to remain at her side, Galadriel sent her back up the tower to stay with her brother and father. Not because she did not want Meira around for what was to surely follow, but to keep Mairon occupied in the belvedere as she led Elrond and Celeborn into the Great Hall of the White Tower. Galadriel could tell from Celeborn’s hardened features that he was not happy to be in this room that had spelled the end of their marriage but Elrond’s entire lack of joy upon their reunion only hardened her suspicion that he knew, who waited stories above them, surrounded by his children.

The deep breath her best friend took, stepping up to the platform at the end of the hall and letting his hand travel across the backrests of the two wooden thrones, made any doubts about what Elrond had come to learn null and void. He most certainly knew. She moved so she had the room’s walls at her back and Celeborn and Elrond in front of her, took a deep breath and braced herself for what was to come.

“It pains me to visit you with what news I have,” Elrond said gravely. “I would have much preferred our meeting after so many years to be under different circumstances.”

“What is it?” Galadriel asked him, feigning worry and cluelessness and Elrond seemed troubled enough himself to completely miss her duplicity.

It killed her to lie to him like that but she could see no other way, not until she was sure exactly how he would proceed. And proceeding seemed to take a toll on him. Celeborn meanwhile was pacing in the shadows, like an angry ball of energy, yet he did not say a single word.

“I think it would be best if you sat down,” Elrond cautioned.

“I think I would prefer to stand.” Galadriel said, schooling her features to be still and not betray any sense of premature knowledge, lest Elrond would reveal something entirely different to her, after all. Though that was unlikely. “Out with it, you are scaring me.”

“Galadriel, I barely dare speak it,” Elrond said, walking down the steps of the platform slowly. “But Celeborn witnessed something. Regarding your children. Something you are probably blind to… because you have known them all their lives or because you were made to.”

“What of them?” Galadriel walled off her mind, fortifying it against the prying she could feel from both Elrond and her stoically silent first husband.

“We believe them to be not what you believe them to be, not half-elven and half-human,” Elrond continued. “We believe they are different.”

“Different how?”

“Like Luthien.” This was the first time Celeborn had spoken.

Galadriel squared her jaw and tilted her head, acting like she did not understand. “I am afraid I do not follow.”

“Your children are not human, in no part,” Elrond said as if it pained him to utter every single syllable anew. “They are elves and something far greater. They are Maiar.”

“How would that be possible? Unless–” Galadriel cut herself off, not wanting to put any words into her old friend’s mouth.

Maybe he still believed something different, something that could be salvaged.

“Your King Halbrand,” Celeborn said with much malice. “He is a liar. He is not who he says he is.”

“Galadriel, I don’t know how to tell you this,” Elrond began. “But we believe that he is the one you have been hunting, whom we all believed perished… he is–”

“—Sauron.” Celeborn spat, apparently Elrond was too slow to get to the point for his taste and Galadriel ceased to breathe, feeling both of their eyes on her.

She did not know how to react, what was most prudent. Any big show of surprise or disbelief might alert them to her own lies but then again she didn’t think she could feasibly let them know now that this revelation was not news to her at all. Though it did seem preposterous to believe that she would not have known something, living so closely to Mairon all these years, so maybe she should take that into account? Not that she knew he was Sauron but maybe pretend that he had told her some other story that could have him be a Maiar? As she pondered, she did nothing, waited, and she would soon learn that this was enough to seal her fate.

Celeborn on the other side of the room let out a mirthless laugh that made Galadriel’s head spin to him.

“I told you,” he said, looking to Elrond, who looked at him and then back to Galadriel. “She knows.”

“What?!” Galadriel yelped, took a step towards Elrond but something had changed in his face and he took an instinctive step back from her.

She tried so hard to keep whatever he found revealed to him there off of her face but she failed, must have failed – because in the next instance, Elrond stared at her like he had never seen her before in his life.

“It is impossible she did not know,” Celeborn continued.

“Be quiet!” Galadriel ordered her first husband and he ceased speaking – but held her glare angrily.

“No, tell me!” Elrond stepped between them, making Galadriel focus back on him. “Tell me now if Celeborn is right.”

Galadriel said nothing, which was confirmation enough.

“You knew,” Elrond repeated dimly and staggered back a few paces as if she had struck him across the face. “How long? How long have you known?”

“Elrond, I–”

“–NO!” It was the first time in their millennia of knowing each other that he screamed at her. “No more lies, Galadriel. I will have the truth now.”

“Since the day we made the two rings in Eregion,” she said, dropping all pretences at once, it was no use anymore.

Elrond did not breathe. Instead he stumbled a few steps further backward.

“All this time,” he muttered. “You have lain with our greatest enemy for all these years and you knew! You gave him children!”

“Please, let me explain,” Galadriel hurried to say, moving to get to him, to beseech him. “He is not who you think he is, look how good he has be–”

“–Do not dare,” Celeborn stepped between them, one hand outstretched to keep her away. “Do not dare try to ensnare us like your demon husband did you, you treacherous witch!”

Galadriel stood with the wall at her back and looked from Celeborn to Elrond. Celeborn was lost to her, she knew that, but Elrond… Elrond was her oldest friend and suddenly she felt rotten. She should have told him. She should not have played him for a fool just moments earlier. He looked at her like they were strangers and the worst thing about that was that she deserved every little bit of his malice.

“Elrond, I–,” she tried one last time but Celeborn did next give her the chance.

“–I SAID QUIET!” He was screaming at the top of his lungs and charged towards her.

It was at this moment that the double doors behind them flew open, Mairon and their children barging into the hall, all three looking equally as alarmed. They all knew what had happened, must have heard it clear as day with all the shouting.

Celeborn drew a short sword he had had concealed underneath his robes and Mairon lept further into the room, only stopped by Galadriel commanding him to step aside.

“Please, can we not discuss this?” She begged Elrond, whom Celeborn shielded and pushed him forward, past Mairon and the prince and princess, who let them pass at Galadriel’s fervent behest. “Elrond, will you at least hear me out? Please!”

But Celeborn dragged the elven king on and forth and only when they passed into the Grand Foyer, did Galadriel chase after them, her family at her back, and followed them outside.

“Do you want me to stop them?” Mairon asked her and she knew, despite all of the progress they had made, that he would kill them without thinking twice about it, if she asked him to.

She shook her head and stopped chasing them halfway down the middle of the stairs, watching as they frantically untied their horses from the posts they had left them at.

“No. Whatever happens now, must,” she decided. “Anything else would prove their point.”

“What does it mean, Mama?” Meira asked, her hand clasping Mairon’s at his side.

“Trouble,” Galadriel said as Elrond and Celeborn below mounted their steeds and rode off at breakneck speed. “Ancient wounds that beg reckoning.”

“War, too,” Emil added gravely and in a flash, Galadriel remembered the look of her son in the morning, how rattled he had looked. “I’ve seen it in my dream. Not just Galador… all of the Southlands, of Middle Earth on the brink of destruction.”

“Do not say that,” Galadriel warned him. “There are a million other ways we could go. There is no need to fret an outcome we might yet prevent. I am sure we can salvage this. They only need to look at what we have done here to know… we are not a threat to them.”

“I am not sure the elves will agree,” Mairon said.

“They might not matter,” Galadriel said. “Not if the rest of our allies know who we are.”

“What are you thinking?” Her husband asked her, gathering Meira into his side, worried as she looked.

“I say we preempt any move on their part, any slander or revelations they might throw our way.”

“Unmask me?” Mairon asked, following her trail of thoughts seamlessly. “Come forward to our people and our friends before they can spin their tale?”

Galadriel nodded. It would be difficult and painful and require all she had learned of politics in her day – but it was the only way she could see them have any hope of salvaging the situation.

“I do not understand still,” Meira said, looking from her father to her mother. “You say Papa did bad things in the past but that was so so long ago, you said thousands of years, even. – So for a millennia, he has done good. – And everyone knows that! Here at least, everyone knows. And Gondor knows. And Uncle Elrond… he must know, too. We are friends with all the peoples of the world, surely that must be enough!”

“Unfortunately it’s not necessarily that simple,” Mairon said. “They are old wounds, true, but they are deep.”

“Not for us,” Emil said evenly. “Not for those who don’t remember what it was like before, when what is, is good.”

And for all the horror and dread Galadriel was prepared to encounter in the aftermath of what they had to put forth to their people, she was not prepared for her son to be right…

***

It was a strange thing to hear her husband say aloud in the new city hall, mere hours later, surrounded by their people – that Halbrand had not been the name the king had always responded to. He coated it in pretty words but the ugly truth of it was that he was not what he claimed to be. And when he finally uttered the word Sauron, Galadriel braced for an uproar. But what they got instead were whispers. Once they had swollen to confused murmurs, Lady Anima Heldever, one of their courtiers, stepped forth to speak.

“The Sauron of legend, your Grace?” She asked, looking confused as the rest of the crowd did. “The one who fought at Morgoth’s side in the Great War?”

Mairon nodded and now surely, the people would cry out and run forth from the place or even start a riot – but no one moved.

“I am sure there are many questions,” Mairon said carefully and he made sure not to make any sudden movements, so as to not cause a panic. “And I will answer as many as you may have.”

One by one, people came forward and asked. Everything Galadriel would have expected one would ask in a situation such as this, and more she had not even thought of herself.

By the end, Mairon had detailed much of his life – he had explained about the Maiar, the Valar, about Eru and Morgoth himself. He told them that his name had once been Mairon, that Morgoth had once been Melkor. He skirted much of the horror but also did not shirk off the responsibility he carried. He detailed the way he had wished to rebuild and heal Middle Earth once he was free of Morgoth’s influence, told them how he had spent nearly a thousand years living among the Southlanders before he finally met Galadriel and told them how she offered him a path to create true change and set the Southlands to right.

Then there was another long moment of silence until Lady Heldever spoke once more: “Why only reveal all this now?”

“We strongly expect news to travel,” Galadriel answered. “And we owe it to you all that you hear it from us first. So you can decide whether or not you want us at our helm. Or if you want to leave this land. – If there is trouble heading our way for this revelation, you should not be the ones to suffer it.”

“Far as we concerned, you only ever did right by us, your Graces,” said a merchant from the front.

“Aye!” Echoed someone from further back.

“And you have healed this land, much like you have set out to do,” Lady Heldever added. “My grandmother told me when I was a child that you restored the land after Orodruin erupted and you built Galador for us – we have had peace for a hundred years, our children know neither war nor strife – why would we abandon you now for something that is well and truly in the past and redeemed a hundred times over?” The lady stepped forward onto the platform up front and addressed the public. “This is our king, is he not?”

“Aye!” Called the same voice from before, from the back.

“And he has never abandoned the Southlands!”

“Aye!” More joined in, bringing back to Galadriel’s mind the very first night the Southlanders had rallied around her husband, a hundred years ago when the South was nothing but a sad camp full of wounded and lost villagers.

“And he is forgiven!” Lady Heldever called out to more cheers and Galadriel grabbed Mairon’s hand on instinct.

He squeezed it tight, keeping his eyes on their citizens.

“For all the times our king and queen have kept us safe, we will not forsake them now, will we?”

“Never!” Came the chants.

“The ground of our fathers!” The merchant shouted from the first row.

“The land of our sons!” A thousand voices called back.

“King Sau–,” began Lady Helveder’s husband Berron, but Mairon raised a hand to stop him.

“–Mairon, please,” said the king and Lord Helveder nodded.

“King Mairon!” The lord shouted. “All hail!”

“Hail King Mairon, hail King Mairon!” The crowd echoed and then on and on. “Hail Queen Galadriel! Hail to the prince and princess! Hail to the Southlands!”

Only now did Mairon turn his head to face Galadriel and he seemed touched and about as unable to believe what was transpiring as she did. Soon after, they took their leave and retired to the belvedere while Meira and Emil stayed with the council to deliberate fortifying the city walls and readying their troops just in case.

***

“This went better than I expected,” Mairon said, letting himself sink down onto his bed.

“Small mercies,” Galadriel said and sat down next to him. “The best outcome we could have anticipated, though in some ways the least surprising. Their lives are short, their memories even shorter. You heard them yourself, your past is but legend to them. Emil was right. They only know you as a good and kind king, much like our children only know you as a loving father. – It is those with the longer memories we need to worry about.”

“The elves.” Mairon sighed.

“Elrond is blocking me out, that is a non-starter,” Galadriel admitted. “I will contact Isildur, he might take it better coming from me. Old Durin as well… but the orcs, they almost worry me most.”

“There is none left alive who remember the past,” Mairon reminded her. “They rarely live longer than a century.”

“But their entire existence is owed to your master’s gruesome experiments,” she in turn reminded him. “There might be some ill-will there. I think we should go to the mountains in person. And bring Meira, she carries favour with them.”

Mairon nodded and took a deep breath. “How do you think Isildur will take the news?”

“I do not know. But best not wait to find out – who knows, maybe Elrond and Celeborn have already reached the city and told him some horrific tale,” Galadriel worried. “I should try and bridge our distance right away.”

“I will make arrangements to ride for the mountains.” Mairon nodded. “Emil will have the city in our absence.”

Then he stood up, but she held him back at the wrist. “Thank you.”

“Whatever for?” He stopped short of sitting back down again, but paused and looked down at her and extracted his arm just to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

“For not proving anyone right about who you have been, only about who you’ve become.”

Mairon smiled briefly, but his jaw was squared as he spoke: “I do not wish to escalate things, and I do not wish to endanger our citizens, least of all after this display of loyalty today – but if anyone attacks Galador, I will not stand by and let it happen. I will fight with all I have – with all we have!”

There was danger in the tone of his voice, in the shadow passing across his eyes, in the way his fingers curled into her hair at the back of her head.

“Mairon,” Galadriel murmured but he shook his head.

“Do not look at me like that, I am not mad.”

“I just mean there must be a solution that avoids bloodshed.”

“I am not looking to shed blood,” Mairon insisted, moving his hand down to her shoulder, then her collar bone, stroking his thumb across her sensitive skin in an altogether distracting way. “But you have seen Elrond and worst of all your Lord Celeborn. They will not rest until…” He stopped himself and then let go of her. “I have changed. You have had your part in it. But I have a home now and I will not sit idly by and see it destroyed.”

With that, he left her. She hoped he would never have to make his promise a reality, not only because she was scared what it would do to him, but also because she could not say that she would even try and stop him. In all her years with him, her priorities had shifted. She had family now and a kingdom to protect and if Elrond could not be convinced to hear her out, she would defend her own. Even from him. Even if it would kill her.

***

Once she had braced herself for what else needed to be done, Galadriel wasted no time to connect with Isildur, whom she found wandering in the gardens of his palace in Osgiliath. She asked if Elrond and Celeborn had been by before saying anything more and Isil seemed surprised about the question. Galadriel did not know how she felt about this – because it suggested that the two of them had forgone Gondor in favour of returning to Lindon sooner, which did not bode well for the immediate future.

“What is it? – You look troubled, my lady,” Isildur asked in turn and Galadriel would later not be able to recall how exactly she broke the news to him, because the way he reacted to it was so off-putting that it wiped everything else off of her mind.

Because much like the Southlanders, he remained perfectly still and instead of shouting or calling her a traitor like the elves had, Isil just sighed – and then he did something even more unexpected: he smiled.

“I wondered what it was,” he murmured finally, after a long while. “I knew Halbrand was not just a man, not after what I saw him do that day Khazad-dûm fell to the Balrog. – The day my father died.”

“What?!” Galadriel heard herself say, unsure what Isildur was speaking of.

“The day my father died, he went back inside of the mountain to help King Halbrand, he made me and my brother swear to stay outside but I finally went back in after them,” Isildur explained. “I was too late to save my father but I came in time to see that Halbrand wielded a power that was more than human, and even with the mithril ring he wore, that did not make sense. – And my father saw it too, I could tell from the look on his face. He knew that Halbrand had lied about who he was. But I also saw him forgive it. Before he died, before the ground took him… my father accepted Halbrand for what he was, whatever he was. He trusted him. And so I did, too.”

“And you do, still?” Galadriel asked carefully, the memory of the very moment the King of Gondor was describing coming back to her.

She had seen this when Mithrandir had unlocked her spirit from her body, back when Gil-galad had been corrupted by one of the rings, she had seen Elendil make the choice to trust, just the way Isil described it – she had not seen Isildur in the mines then, but that was hardly surprising, considering that Mairon’s life had been on the line back then – and she had been distracted by the balrog, too.

“Do you still trust him, knowing what you know now?” Galadriel added.

“Funnily enough, I do,” he replied. “Do you think that is unwise?”

“I do not, obviously I married him, despite all of it.” She shrugged because this was the only possible answer to this.

“So you knew for a while?” He asked. She nodded.

“A little after we landed on Middle Earth all those years ago.”

“So, you saw what I saw in him, even then.” Isil sighed and smiled a little. “He always sought a home, or at least that’s what he seemed like to me. And when he was declared the King of the Southlands by the Queen Regent… he seemed so glad to have found one. I think there is good in such a creature, and I think no matter what he got roped into in his past, for as long as I knew him, he has done everything to keep us all safe and prosperous. – He gave us our home, too. If that is a Dark Lord, then I’ll happily remain in the darkness with him. And if Galador asks for aid if anyone thinks differently, Gondor will answer.”

***

King Durin was not quite as ready to swear fealty to the Southlands, however. Because by the time Galadriel got through to him, he had already fortified his mind and it took many tries to whittle down his defences enough to confront him at last. It turned out that instead of going to Osgiliath, Elrond had stopped over at his old friend’s seat. Galadriel should have known. It pained her to even think what Elrond must have told the dwarf, how betrayed he must have been feeling, how disappointed in her. She believed she could see a glimpse of it reflected in the dwarf king’s eyes. WHich made it hard to hold his glare.

Durin was gruff with her, telling off her and her husband in absence, for the lies and the years of deceit. His anger made her fear for the worst but instead of threatening retaliation, Durin merely warned her off of the mines and barked that he demanded his kin be left in peace.

He made it very clear that his men would hold the mithril mines against any intruders, human, elf or otherwise – and that the dwarves would be impartial in whatever would happen in the aftermath of the reveal.

“We have no want nor need of the mithril, we have promised to forget it even exists and we stand by that promise,” Galadriel reminded him. “We are not different people than we were before… you know us, you know Halbrand.”

“Oi, that is not his name anymore now, is it?” Durin asked, his voice brittle with old age. “Is he King Sauron now?”

“King Mairon,” Galadriel told him in a calm voice. “Sauron is in the past.”

“And the mithril? Do I have your word that I won't find the ruins of my father’s kingdom crawling with your orcs next time I send a patrol?”

“I promise,” Galadriel assured him. “Like I said, we have no need of it.”

“No, I expect you will take the old rings out of the treasure chest, will ye?”

Galadriel glanced down onto her hand where her wedding band sat, the ring that had once been called Nenya.

“With those and your Dark Lord’s magic powers, I doubt you can be defeated in any case,” Durin said.

“We do not wish to face either defeat nor triumph, we do not want conflict,” Galadriel swore, because it was true. “Did Elrond speak of battle?”

Durin said nothing, he only looked glumly to the side.

“No… he didn’t.” Galadriel tilted her head, understanding. “But he did ask after the mithril, did he not?”

“The mithril, the mines, the remains of the Balrog,” Durin replied grimly. “And I told him exactly what I told yer. No one touches those mines, no one gets that ore. The way is shut. The dwarves will have no part in whatever this may become but we will keep those mines.”

Galadriel was happy enough with this decision. The memory of Gil-galad’s corruption still fresh in her mind, she rather did not wish to see what the ore would do to Celeborn or her best friend if they got their hands on any of it – but the fact that they had even inquired after it, was a great reason to worry. It spelled trouble, even worse, it spelled preparations.

***

Within a day, Galadriel and Mairon had ridden for the orc mountains, accompanied by a frazzled Meira. She had tried all day to reach anyone in Greenwood but had failed. No one would let her in, which was also rather worrisome. She only smiled again – even if slightly pinched – when they were welcomed with much fanfare in the orc’s underground town. The fact that the news had already made it there by way of the current council member, a sensible fellow named Korax, was less than ideal, but so far, none of them acted much differently.

They still bowed to Galadriel and reported their successes and advancements to Mairon. They still showered Meira with as much love and affection orcs were capable of. And when Mairon asked to speak to them in the cavernous town centre, they listened avidly the way they were used to – orc listening involved a lot of shouting, but the shouting did neither entail rabid calls for their heads, nor bitter cries of betrayal.

“Now hear me!” Mairon said, having to repeat himself over the perfectly averagely rowdy crowd. “You hear me loud and clear: I had a part in your creation and the pain therein – and for many many years I have tried to make up for it as best as I could. But I do not expect your fealty now. Whatever may come, I do not expect anything from you. You will always have my protection but I do not expect anything in return. You are free. And you owe me nothing.”

Only then did the crowd roar at an unusual volume and upheaval. It took Meira whistling through her fingers, which reverberated through what seemed to be the entire mountain, to get them to calm down.

“What are you yelling about?” She called out, her voice so loud and bellowing, it looked entirely at odds with her lithe frame and innocent appearance – with her soft curls she looked like a forest nymph and her pale, flowy dress matched her surroundings as little as the adoring glances on the faces of the orcs falling silent in her wake. “Will one of you speak for the lot, so my father can give you what you want?”

“We want naught, your Grace,” one of the orcs said, one of their leaders. “King Halbrand–”

“—Mairon,” Meira corrected him. “King Mairon.”

“King Mairon,” the orc repeated with a somewhat clumsy curtsey aimed at the king. “No one here remembers the dark days. We just remember our home. A home that you gave us!”

With the orcs yelling their assent, Galadriel remembered that Isildur had said something similar the day before. He gave us our home. It seemed the orcs felt much the same way about her husband. Emil’s words came to mind as well. How the old wounds did not carry as heavy a burden. Not for those who don’t remember what it was like before, when what is, is good.

“You always did good for us, and we have our honour,” it was Korax stepping forward who said this and he too earned himself shouts of agreement. “Whenever the sun goes down on Galador, we will defend your home, for it was you, who gave us ours!”

***

Back in Galador, Galadriel had a hard time wrapping her mind around how everything had played out. Sure, she had believed long ago that Mairon’s life alongside hers would be proof enough that he could be redeemed, that he truly had sought to change Middle Earth for the better – but so see that the people and creatures they had been closest to within the last century saw the same things she did, filled her with quiet pride and unfathomable relief. At least for now. Emil had been glad to hear it, too, and felt somewhat vindicated, she could tell. However he did not share in her relief, the vision he had still sharp in his mind. This in turn worried Galadriel once over.

Much like the fact that Elrond and Celeborn had expressed interest in the mithril scared her – and Greenwood not responding to neither her daughter’s nor her attempts to communicate. She tried to keep up a brave facade in front of Meira, who had no concept of political unrest or otherwise, but she was afraid that she could see right through her. Emil had his own way of seeing the world, so hiding from him was impossible anyway.

For the first time in many years – and despite the fact that they were both entirely too old for it – Galadriel and Mairon had seen their children off to bed, each of them at a time, and even tucked them in. It should have felt silly but somehow it didn’t. It helped them all, she thought, to at least pretend that there was some normalcy left in the world amidst all the uncertainty.

Mairon meanwhile, sitting up resting against the headboard of their bed once it was just the two of them, was pale as a sheet and a lot less talkative than usual. Galadriel let her head drop onto his shoulder and scooted close to him so she sat flush at his side, letting the warmth of his body flood her system.

“If I didn’t know better, I would say you look afraid,” she murmured.

“I’m not,” he replied. “Not in the way you think.”

“In what way, then?”

“I am not afraid of any sort of retaliation,” Mairon said. “If this land gets attacked I will defend it. But I am afraid that… there is a way which would keep everyone safe and I am not ready to take it. I’d like to believe that I did enough to prove myself worthy of redemption, of ruling, even… but I still feel not ready to go that last step. I am perhaps even more unwilling than ever before. Because there is so much to lose now, so much more than ever before.”

Galadriel sighed. She had of course thought of this before herself. “If you gave yourself up to the Valar… that could appease the elves. It would remove you from the equation.”

“It would,” he agreed sadly.

“Indeed.” Galadriel nodded, and then turned to face him. “But it’s not happening.”

He tilted his head at her, his eyes twitching like he had just seen her for the very first time.

“But you always insisted on sending me back to them,” he reminded her softly.

“That was before…”

Before the children, she thought, before I married you. Before you proved to me and to all of Middle Earth that even the greatest darkness can be cast out by love.

“Do you truly mean this?” He sounded very unwilling to believe her.

“Of course, I do,” she assured him softly, dropping her voice. Because that way it was easier to keep it even or have any hope to get through what she needed to tell him without crying. “It is true, you have more to lose than ever before. But that is not all. Losing you would be a loss, too. To so many people. Not just your children, but your realm, your allies, your friends. Me. – You cannot leave us. You can’t leave Meira and Emil. You have a place here, a role. A home. A spot on this Middle Earth that is yours. That you deserve. That others depend on. So no, that is not a path we can take. You’re staying. And if need be… we fight.”

Mairon was so overcome by her words, that she barely got to catch a glimpse of his swimming eyes before he was on her, peppering her skin with kisses and shoving her beneath her to make love to her until they were both spent and exhausted and she fell asleep in his embrace, as in love with him as she ever had been.

It would have been a lovely night, a perfect night, even despite all of the circumstances. But then of course she had the dream she was sure, even while dreaming it, that Emil had had the same one two nights prior. The Southlands burning. Not just Orodruin, but the whole mountain range at its back erupting into flames, lava carving through the earth, breaking apart the ground so Galador fell into the fiery ground. And then the rifts spread as darkness fell over the rest of Middle Earth, casting it all in shadow. Carnage and terror. And so, so much death.

She awoke screaming in terror, alone in her bed. Before she had time to cry for her husband, Mairon stumbled back into their chamber from the balcony. Galadriel sobered up instantly when she saw his face and his question if she was alright went unanswered because she instantly had her own to pose.

“What is that in your hand?” She asked, her voice crackling from the early hour, and she pointed at the scroll Mairon clutched in his fist, the parchment completely crinkled.

He held her gaze, took a deep breath, and then closed the distance to the bed to hand it to her.

“Lindon has declared war on us.”

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: THE DOOR OF DAY

“This can’t be!” Galadriel was on her feet so fast she nearly tripped over her nightgown. “How can Elrond even think–” She toppled over her own words, furious. “He did not even hear me out! How dare he?”

Mairon crossed the distance between them swiftly and held her by both her shoulders. “Shh, Galadriel, it will be fine. The last words have not been spoken on the matter, I am certain.”

“You don’t know Elron like I do,” she argued. “He is almost as stubborn as me.”

The ghost of a smile flickered across Mairon’s face at the admission of her stubbornness, which Galadriel was pretty sure he had tried to keep off, but failed. Though he quickly returned to severity.

“We need to ready the army.” Galadriel sighed, already planning through the next steps. “And send out scouts, so we know when the elves move.”

“Everything will be fine,” Mairon said softly. “They’re outnumbered, marching on us risks the peace in all of Middle Earth, I am sure it can be averted.”

Galadriel frowned – but found herself hoping beyond hope that her husband was right. She still sent him to the Great Hall to assemble all the commanders while she tried for the thousandth time to get Elrond to speak to her – but the walls he had raised around his mind remained ever up.

***

Instead of trying that again, she spent her morning trying to get into contact with Greenwood. At last Calathiel let her in, even when Thranduil would not, which had been very much expected. Calathiel met her with an air of caution and distaste about her that made Galadriel feel sour – but she guessed she should not have been surprised. But Calathiel did speak with her at least, not that Galadriel liked what the elf was saying. Thranduil was siding with Lindon in the conflict. Calathiel however, had a counter-offer for Galadriel which she promised she could float with her husband, without promises.

“An alternative to war, so to speak,” Calathiel said and Galadriel nodded at her to go ahead. “If you were to hand over Sauron, so he could be judged in Lindon, then–”

“–No,” Galadriel replied. “That is out of the question. I am not giving up my husband.”

“Your husband?!” Calathiel repeated, aghast. “I could not believe them, when I heard it. That you knew all this time. That you love him. – He is the enemy, Galadriel. He was Morgoth’s deputy!”

“Morgoth is gone. And my husband’s name is Mairon,” Galadriel told her sternly. “Please, Calathiel, you have been here for the last hundred years when he was in power and the thousand before that when he lived among men – he was no danger to any of us all this time. And may I remind you that love does not ask on whom it settles. Your own husband married you despite the fact that you were as good as raised by the people he abhors.”

“That is different and you know it,” Calathiel insisted. “We are still kin. Your Mairon is a demon.”

Galadriel glared at the woman and she shrunk back in response the way only someone’s child would from their parent’s displeasure.

“I’m sorry,” Calathiel said, almost sheepishly. “I wish it were different but if you are not willing to give him up, then there is nothing I can do.”

***

There was not much more to say after that. Galadriel left Calathiel in peace and wondered to find out that their whole exchange had lasted mere minutes but the time she spent pacing after the fact, though it felt brief, took her the rest of the morning. Before it was time to make her way down to the dining hall, she joined Mairon and her children in the war room, just as the meeting with the generals was concluded. She could tell Mairon was calm, if worried – but Meira was angry, all the air around her sizzled with it where she sat with her arms crossed on the intricately carved wooden table.

“We can be operational within five days,” Mairon told his wife before pointing out on the map on the table where the generals had agreed to post battalions around the country.

“But they’re all green,” Meira said grimly, looking frustrated as she hopped off from the table to pace.

“They are still highly trained,” her father reminded her sternly. “And Gondor is supplying–“

“–The few of their soldiers who actually have seen battle before,” Meira interjected, her cheeks pink with red. “I do not know if that is enough.”

“I seem to have forgotten when you have been to war, daughter,” Mairon said, an impatient edge to his voice, which Meira registered with a frown. “Considering with which authority you seem to speak…”

“I may not have been to war yet but we both know Emil and I can hold our own in a fight,” Meira said, not backing down.

“Like Luthien,” Emil piped up from where he leaned on the fireplace and crossed his arms.

“Exactly!” Meira gestured towards her brother, more animated. “Like Luthien!”

“Sparrow, this is different,” Mairon cautioned. “You and your brother are strong, yes, but that does not mean you know what it is to fight for your life.”

“Well, our army doesn’t either,” Meira deadpanned, her cheeks flush with annoyance.

Galadriel knew her anger was not directed at anyone specific, it was the general helplessness she felt herself that put Meira on edge, who did not like feeling out of control either.

“That’s what a hundred years of peace will get you,” Mairon told their daughter, a little exasperatedly. “What do you expect us to do about it now?”

“I don’t know, Papa!” She threw up her hands and intensified her pacing as her voice gained a more pinched quality. “I just… I need to do something. We should be doing more!”

“You can do what your mother and I did, which is teach our men and women what you have learned through your own training,” Mairon offered, noting finally what Galadriel already knew, that Meira was not being stand-offish just because, but that she was deeply worried and scared.

“In five days?” She asked, her voice even higher.

“Five days are better than no days, sparrow.” Mairon softened his tone.

“I just need to do more. If I had… a better weapon. A stronger one,” Meira said, looking from one parent to the other. “What about your rings?”

“The rings are on the hands they belong on,” Galadriel replied, exchanging a look with Mairon.

“Something else then.” Meira didn’t miss a beat. “Give me something better to defend our home with! We can’t just let this happen!”

Galadriel’s heart broke, watching as Meira ruffled her curls, her brow in deep furrows which reminded her of her as just a baby when she used to want to be able to do everything so badly and couldn’t. She must’ve felt much of that same frustration in the moment and Galadriel could not blame her.

Mairon understood as well and much like he usually comforted his wife, he now walked over to his daughter and put his large hand on her cheek gently.

“Everything will be fine,” he promised her like he had promised Galadriel earlier. “We will prevail. We are not alone.”

Emil emerged from the shadows then, put his hand on her shoulder and drew her into his side once Mairon had dropped his hand. Emil squeezed Meira tight and despite all of it, it pleased Galadriel to see her children united in support in the worst of times – Eru knew if they fought usually, they fought as viciously as only siblings could. Though outside adversity did tend to bring those who loved each other closer together.

“We will prevail, sister,” Emil assured Meira, no trace of anything but love in his voice – but Galadriel knew what he had seen in his dreams.

Emil could not promise his sister a good outcome any more than her mother could. There was no telling what would happen. But such was the way of reassuring those closest to you, everyone knew realistically there were no guarantees for anything, but it was good to hear it and good to say it, too.

***

In the following days they awaited news from the scouts they had sent westwards and readied their troops. It was a matter of the intel they were waiting for on where to station any additional troops, if at all, or focus entirely on Galador. The High Council universally expected an attack on the capital, which was why Mairon had made arrangements with the orcs to make space in their mountains if bad came to worse, for the women, children and elderly, and those who did not wish to fight.

Galadriel had sucked in a deep breath when Mairon broke the news to their people on the palace steps and declared that he would not draft further soldiers from the citizenry by force. He only opened the military academy up to volunteers. Galadriel drew in another sharp breath, when she saw how many men and women did just that – volunteer for the reserve – mere moments after. Their generals had their work cut out for them, getting the newly minted warriors through basic training. Which was where Meira found her calling and roped her little brother into it as well.

Like her father had suggested, she spent from sunrise to sunset in the barracks, teaching the recruits archery, while Emil showed them the Elvish sword-fighting style he had been taught in Greenwood. This helped greatly, as Galadriel and Mairon were spread thin with other preparations – their city walls had been made to be beautiful in those times of peace and were overgrown with thick vines in many places that made for excellent climbing aides. Those of course needed torching and the walls reinforcements.

But it seemed no matter how much they did, Galadriel felt ill-prepared. She had seen so much war and strife in her lifetime and had held command over armies and a city state before, but this kingdom that had been hers, this kingdom of humans, somehow felt more precious to her, because its people were so fragile – and so incredibly loyal.

A hundred years ago, that which had remained of her Northern Armies, the elves, they had mutinied against her – yet those humans, they had learned that their king had lied to them and hid a gruesome past, but they loved him and their queen so well, their loyalty had not faltered once. At this very moment, there were recruits as young as sixteen and as old as sixty-five training under her children on the fields beyond the city gates well into the evening, prepared to risk their lives for the land they had built. If she had more time to be sentimental, she would have been, greatly so.

***

As it was, two days into the war-time arrangements, standing in her balcony at dusk, was the only real moment, she allowed herself to take stock of what she stood to lose. It was not just her family that was in danger, though of course harm coming to her children or husband – whose spirit was now tied to his human form – was her greatest fear but all those souls at her feet, all those men, women and children under her care, she worried for their safety too. And for their home. Their beautiful home. She glanced past the town square below, past the grand main street with its eateries and shops and merchant palaces, into the old and crooked alleyways she had seen raised with her own eyes.

She breathed in the crisp early summer air, sweet and fragrant with the iridescent flowers that grew from the vines, spotting the city in green and white. This flower on green and grey ground – it was the banner of the Southlands. Three years into their reign, the choice had been made that these things reflected this land best. A beautiful, resilient flower that bloomed long and prettily, green for the vines and the endless fields and forests, grey for the towns of stone, the fertile lands and the sprawling mountains.

She let out a huff of air, frustration pushing aside the worries and her knuckles turned white from how hard she gripped the balustrade. Theirs was a beautiful realm, and much more so a peaceful one. The Southlands had never started a conflict, had never acted in anything other than self-defence against other aggressors. Before Eru, between them, considering Gil-galad, Lindon had a worse track record in war-mongering!

It was not fair that Celeborn and Elrond would not hear or see reason. They were so blinded by their hatred of Sauron, they wilfully ignored that Galadriel had had Mairon well in hand for a century now. Had him bound to his human form, had him invested in the safety of Middle Earth. Had given him children whose home he was and always would be dedicated to sustain? Really, he could be its staunchest defender – why were they so determined to keep having him as their enemy? And her by extension?

Though something hidden inside her told her that for Celeborn, she was likely just as much of an enemy as Mairon was. Maybe she was just as much to blame. Forgo doing Morgoth’s dirty work, try dissolving a marriage! That will put a target on your back…

She scoffed angrily and forced that anger down again. It was such a nice night, maybe one of the last ones she would see in peace, with her home untarnished. And she wanted to see it, remember it, every inch of her city, lest it would be forgotten. And she wanted to look upon it and smile, so she forbid herself any thought of Celeborn for the rest of the night.

***

She stood there for a long time, until the moon came up and the stars glistened up above and Mairon joined her. It was a tried motion at this point, but no less welcome for it, the way he would slot in behind her and put his arms around her middle, holding her steady against his frame.

“I am frightened,” she admitted. “It feels different this time, this threat. Like something is coming apart at the fringes. I’m scared that we could lose all of this. The children… we just got them back. And you… you’re vulnerable.”

“Not any more vulnerable than you or them,” he reminded her.

“But more vulnerable than you could be,” she insisted. “If you die, you’re gone.”

“From this realm,” he said.

“And your spirit will be tried and chained in Aman,” she whispered.

“Maybe.” She could feel him shrug against her back. “Or maybe I have redeemed myself and we will be reunited. Maybe we’ll go out together and we’ll be bound to each other so tightly, we can choose our own destination. Maybe we will go somewhere else entirely.”

“Hmm, maybe.” Galadriel repeated, humming slightly, it was a nice thought, it was also highly unlikely.

“We will be fine,” Mairon promised, though it sounded a little bit hollow. “We will keep them all safe. We have the rings. We have armies and allies. And I’m still powerful, even if I can die a little easier.”

“Do not say that,” she admonished and he chuckled a little bit, the tremor of it reverberating in her bones.

Galadriel knew he worried, too, but he tried his best to keep her spirits up, though nothing he did could ward off the sense of doom she felt. Stronger than ever before. The fear she had faced with Adar and Gil-galad paled in comparison to the dread clutching her insides now. Like there was something bigger lurking around the next corner, something worse than a couple of angry elven kings.

“You know there is something bigger at play here,” she said aloud, having thought it and felt him push her thought away as if it was his own.

“I know,” he said and then, frustratingly, nothing more.

Instead, he turned her around in his arms and gave her a little smile.

We’ll be fine, he thought at her, once over, and then he kissed her until she was willing to believe him. If only for a moment. He tasted like home.

***

A day later, the war council had grown to twenty souls. Their human generals were joined by three orcs and by midday, their ranks grew even more as the Princes Elendur and Valandil from Osgiliath arrived. They heard scout reports from the Gondorian Princes speaking of movement from Lindon, Greenwood, headed towards Dargolad, and more confusing, a small elvish fleet had sailed from Halindon, apparently headed for the Sundering Sea.

Prince Valandil, who knew of the old legends, wondered if maybe the elves wanted to enlist help from Valinor, the way Eärendil had. But Galadriel did not think that was their destination. Her husband agreed.

“You would not send a fleet for that. Navigating to Valinor is a feat in and of itself – you would want a small ship, a sturdy but fast one, not multiple ships,” he said. “They are coming to the South as well. I’d wager, they will find their way to the Sea of Nurnen, hit our water reserves, starve us out,” he said, pointing at the lake on the map of the Southlands, which carved into the table. “We have to send a battalion there.”

The meeting had dragged on well into the middle of the day, when the next unsettling news reached Galador in the form of a dwarven emissary who bid Galadriel to reach out for King Durin. She had the room cleared, safe for Mairon and the children and Meira whispered everything that was said back into her father’s ear as he could not see Durin the way elves could. Galadriel kept glancing at her husband as Meira whispered, Mairon’s face going from concerned to disbelieving as the whole tale unfolded.

Durin was so angry, it visibly took Meira a while to fully comprehend his barking tone and relay what he said back to her father. Galadriel herself had to ask him several times to slow down until finally she was able to decipher what had happened: In the morning, about a hundred-strong troop of elven soldier bearing the mark of Halindon – Celeborn’s men – had overrun the guards at the gate of Khazad-dûm, killed nearly all of them, and had stolen enough mithril to cause great concern. Based on the sparse few survivor reports, they had some unknown beasts with them that no dwarf had seen before, strong monsters with giant, clawed paws that had dug through the rubble in the mine.

By the time reinforcements got there, they were doing something to the Balrog’s remains and carrying out mithril-veined rocks. Apparently enough of it to flee with their bounty instead of taking a stand. But the damage was done and King Durin was incensed. And as angry as he was – and as ready to leave neutrality well and truly behind – as little could Galadriel make sense of the whole thing. Not because it was surprising that someone would make a grab for the mithril, really she had all but expected a version of this very early on, but because Galadriel could not fathom that Elrond would march on his friend.

“That is what I said to Dissa,” Durin bellowed. “I cannot believe him!”

“I do not think this was sanctioned by Elrond,” Galadriel theorised. “I think Celeborn might have moved on his own.”

“Either way,” Durin gruffed. “Nobody attacks my kingdom and gets away with it. You can now consider the dwarves your allies! I sent over a token of our friendship and I’m dispatching my son and two-hundred men to fight by your side on the morrow.”

Galadriel thanked him profusely, inclining her head, and watched, as the envoy Durin had sent, put a leather satchel on the war table and undid the straps to reveal a large, heavy whip, pitch black and made from a material that was not from this earth.

“What is this?” Meira asked, her eyes going wide, and Galadriel caught Mairon’s glance.

“Is that what I think it is?” Galadriel asked, both Durin and Mairon.

The latter nodded, as the dwarf king said: “Aye, these elven bastards tried to make off with it but we fought it back from them – I decided it was safer in your hands.”

“Is this really the–”

“–the Balrog’s whip,” Emil said, cutting off his sister, they both knew the story of the beast and its formidable weapon.

“Should it not be… aflame?” Meira wondered and abandoned her seat next to Mairon to grab the whip from the table to have a closer look at it.

The second she touched it, the black of the whip crackled alive, sparks flying. And as she moved away from the table, the whip secure in her hand, it came fully alive, aflame, curling around her like water, like it followed her every move.

“Ha! Do you see that, Mama?”

“Careful with that,” Galadriel cautioned and hurried over to still Meira’s hand.

Reluctantly, Meira handed the weapon over which was immediately extinguished in Galadriel’s hand. Apparently its magic only revealed itself to those with Maian blood.

“Papa, can I keep it?” Meira asked, giving her father exactly the sort of puppy eyes Galadriel knew he could not withstand for long. She tilted her head at her husband.

“She did want a special weapon,” he said and she knew he was already gone for Meira’s little spiel – and so Galadriel relented.

“You can have it,” Galadriel decided. “But no wielding it in the tower – and you have to be careful with this, it can do real damage.”

“Oh, I’m counting on it,” Meira said, beaming.

“I figured you would have more use for it than we would,” Durin said, nodding towards Meira – like almost everyone, he had a particular soft spot for the girl – and then turned back towards Galadriel. “Expect my sons within the week and if you get ahold of Elrond… tell him, he has another thing coming.”

Galadriel sighed, bewildered at the nearly amused tone of the dwarf, when they both knew the whole matter was rather serious, but she nodded her agreement anyway… and had no idea just how soon she would be in the position to actually pass on the message.

***

In the dead of night, Galadriel awoke to his voice; Elrond, clear as day, in her head, as loud as if he was standing next to her. Finally, he was letting her in! She sat up in bed, Mairon sound asleep beside her, and expected Elrond to reach out from wherever he was – but she quickly learned that he was much closer than anticipated.

“I’m in Galador,” he told her, to her complete bafflement, and she was about to call for help when he stopped her. “Alone, I am alone. I promise on Valinor! – We need to confer, as soon as possible.”

“I… what?” Galadriel stumbled out of bed, barely dressed, trying to make sense of the sudden reappearance of her best friend, deeply unsure what to make of it.

“Please, you have to hear me out,” Elrond all but begged. “Celeborn has lost his mind.”

***

Galadriel was surprised by her ability to spirit a foreign agent into her own palace, but she figured it was easier, given that all the night guards simply let her go wherever she wanted. However, still, the ease with which she managed to get Elrond into the library on the ninth story of the tower, was not half as unsettling as the news her visitor brought.

She sat him down with a cup of warm mead and biscuits but he had no appetite. And he looked like he had not slept in days and days. As he drank a sip and took a bite out of sheer politeness, Galadriel hovered by the door, and fingered for a dagger, hidden between the scrolls on the shelf which she kept at her back. Elrond saw it, because he knew her well enough to look. He inclined his head to her.

“I mean you no harm,” he promised her, sounding exhausted, and for once as if his age was measured in mortal time.

“And you expect me to simply trust you?” She challenged unforgivingly. “That my family is safe with you here?!”

“I am sorry, Galadriel.” He sat up, sounded almost pleading, and looked like she somehow had to understand where he was coming from. “But you. Married. Sauron. Sauron!”

“Mairon,” Galadriel corrected him curtly. “And you never even heard me out. After thousands of years of being my best friend! I had my reasons, good reasons, I could have told–”

“–I will grovel in due time,” he interrupted her and she had half a mind to believe him, given his urgency, but he still apparently felt the need to make his case despite it all. “And while I still do not trust your husband, I am not too proud to admit, when you have a point, and you do. He has been with you for a hundred years and has made no grab for power.”

“Unlike Celeborn,” Galadriel said cuttingly, as if she held Elrond personally responsible for that lapse in judgement, while knowing full well what the answer would be. “Did you sanction his attack on Khazad-dûm?”

“No, of course not!” Elrond jumped up from his seat, predictably, and Galadriel moved on, because she had known this.

“So, what do you mean Celeborn has lost his mind?” She asked, stepping a few paces back from him, keeping close to the shelves. “Like Gil-galad?”

“No. No, I think it’s way worse.” Elrond sighed, noting the cautious distance she put between them like it pained him, but he only had himself to blame for that. “I pulled back as many men as I could after I learned about the mithril run. – But even without the ore, there is something about him… and his soldiers. There’s a darkness, Galadriel. And it’s different from anything I’ve felt before. Ever since we left you here, it’s been getting worse and worse. He told me about a plan, in very broad strokes, though I fear I still know barely anything. But it made my blood curdle, the way he talked of it. He is looking for something. In Nurn, I believe. And I worry that if he finds it, we’ll all be lost.”

“What do you mean?” She asked, alerted, trying to make sense of his words and failing to.

“I mean we have to hurry to figure out what he is looking for,” Elrond insisted.

“But he isn’t here yet, in the Southlands… is he?” She felt dim, glum panic rise up in her, accompanied by that sensation of ever-pressing doom and this dark feeling of premonition, like she had to have known something like this had always been awaiting her and hers.

Elrond seemed to chew on something, physically, but from the way he spoke next, she knew it was the truth that he had problems getting past his lips.

“It’s these beasts that he has, the ones he took to tear apart the mines,” he said grimly. “They are fast. If the ships from Halindon made landfall in South Gondor already… they can cross leagues and leagues, and scale cliffs, in mere minutes. They are not from here, Galadriel, these beasts. His power is not from here.”

“Then where is it from?” She felt her ears get hot as her heartbeat accelerated, despising this feeling of being spoon fed some great revelation that she was somehow sure, she already knew. “Elrond, you have to tell me the truth”.

“Morgoth,” Elrond said finally, and the word hung between them as Galadriel swallowed hard, and knew that she had known this.

She had pushed it away, but she had suspected it with everything she had, she had suspected this.

“I think,” Elrond began. “I don’t know for certain but I believe… somehow in Númenor, I believe Pharazon found a way, like… like a window to the Void. I think he opened that window and Morgoth reached out and bore into his heart and then later… into Celeborn’s. And I think he’s been whispering in his ear ever since they returned. I think it was Morgoth who pushed him to find out about you and Sauron– Mairon and after that…”

Elrond fell silent as Galadriel pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to hang on to her composure as she attempted to make sense of it all.

“But how?” She asked. “How could Morgoth return… through a window? He has been gone for centuries, banished from this world!”

“I have no clue, Galadriel!” Elrond explained and went on: “But I think what Celeborn is looking for has everything to do with Morgoth. And you.”

“Me?!” She absent-mindedly bumped into the shelf and had to ungracefully settle herself against it, a few scrolls dropping to the floor with dusty thuds.

“Is it not obvious?” Elrond gave her a long look and she knew what he was going to say… because it was indeed obvious. “Celeborn wants you, or wants to punish you for choosing your beloved demon over him, and if Morgoth has his heart, there’s no telling how far he will go to ensure that he will regain control over you. And if Morgoth truly wishes to use him for his aid, he has clearly found a willing participant.”

“But why should Celeborn be headed to Nurn for that?” Galadriel asked, furious that she could not find that one missing piece still. “What is in Nurn?!”

“I think I might know,” a third voice said then, at the exact same time the door to the library fell open and Galadriel looked at her husband and son, both dressed for sleep, and behind them Meira with tousled hair and a nightdress so pale and translucent Galadriel would rather not she be wearing it in the company of Elrond.

“Where you listening outside the door?” She hissed to them, though neither of them looked particularly apologetic.

“You weren’t exactly quiet,” Meira deadpanned, and did not sound particularly apologetic, either.

Galadriel heard Elrond draw in a little breath behind her and his chair creak as he bumped against it, though she was not sure if it was because he was nervous to come face to face with Sauron again – now knowing who he was – or if it was the fact that she caught his eyes lingering on her daughter for a second too long.

“Emil woke me up,” Mairon said, as a way of explaining why he was there, apparently having missed the look.

Meira hadn’t.

“My lord,” she said and made a half curtsy towards the High King of the Elves and to Galadriel’s chagrin, made no move to cover up her modesty.

“Princess Meira, Prince Emil,” Elrond said, squirming a little, sheepish, though she thought he deserved it. “It is good to finally meet you in person.”

“Is it?” Meira shot back without a trace of reverence – or even respect. “I heard you and your lot think me and my brother are demon spawn.”

“Meira!” Galadriel warned – Elrond might have deserved her daughter’s insolence but she still had raised her daughter better than this.

“What?! He just said it,” Meira spat, and to be fair, she was right. “And his kind are trying to kill us!”

“That is not–,” Elrond said, stumbled over his words, and pried his eyes away from Meira to look between her and her brother. “This was never about you.”

“Just about our father,” Emil noted calmly, though not without an edge and a cutting air of superiority which was a feat for someone so much younger than Elrond. “Though it seems you have finally gotten wise on what the real threat to Middle Earth is.”

“Excuse my children,” Galadriel said, torn between customs and being a little bit proud of them. “It seems we have failed in teaching them manners.”

Meira and Emil crossed their arms in front of their chests simultaneously and Mairon went to shut the doors behind them.

“Well, now that introductions have been made…,” he noted, not without humour and although that seemed a little misplaced, the effort touched something in Galadriel and she had to smile at him.

To her surprise, when she looked back at Elrond, he looked like he was fighting a smile himself, before reigning in his features, back to neutrality.

“Mairon,” the elf said and she figured this was the height of respect her husband could expect.

“Elrond.” Mairon inclined his head, keeping still and at a distance, a show of good faith.

“So what is your theory?” Elrond asked. “What could be hidden in Nurn.”

“In the Sea of Nurnen, more precisely,” he replied and then explained: “When we – eons ago.” He cleared his throat. “”hen the Great War was drawing to a close, Morgoth had contingency plans. One, of course, was the creation of Mordor. But he could always foresee a version of events that would leave him banished to the Beyond. And he had this idea, some faint knowledge – of ways to escape from the Void. He knew of the prophecy of his return.”

“Dagor Dagorath,” Elrond said.

“The battle to end all battles.” Emil nodded.

“Remind me,” Meira piped up, her arms still crossed. “What does that have to do with the Sea of Nurnen? What does that prophecy say?”

“According to the prophecy, Morgoth will discover how to break the Door of Night,” Galadriel answered. “And will blacken the sun and the moon.”

Mairon nodded gravely. “But the wording, the original wording is not that specific. It is not directly the Door of Night that is mentioned, but a version of “The Door of Day’s Passing”. It was just widely believed to refer to the Door of Night.”

“What are you saying?” Galadriel asked, trying to keep her voice as even as possible as Mairon sighed.

“Morgoth was convinced there was… a sort of sister-door. A second portal, not in the Immortal Lands but here, in Middle Earth. Not on a barren plain like in Aman but surrounded, submerged, in a body of water. The Door of Day.”

“In the Sea of Nurnen?” Emil asked to clarify.

“Further East, at least that was what he originally believed. But maybe… maybe he was wrong,” Mairon mused. “Maybe in the Void he found the true location… Maybe it is a lot closer to home. Maybe Morgoth knew it even then and just never told me, maybe that is another reason why he wanted the Southlands for himself.”

“So, so… do you believe this could really be true?” Galadriel asked her husband, dropping a bit of her even facade because she simply could not hold onto it anymore. “That Morgoth is back? And working through Celeborn? And trying to return? To bring on Dagor Dagorath?”

“I do not know.” Mairon looked at her, shrugging helplessly, like the uncertainty and latent fear pained him just the same. “I told you, I feel him, always. And since I have been bound to this body, it has gotten harder and harder to distinguish where his darkness comes from. I am not as sharp as I once was, no longer as… susceptible.”

“But there is a possibility?” Elrond asked.

“It would be foolish to discard it,” Mairon answered him.

“Mama, I think this is what I have seen,” Emil muttered, dropping his hands to grab his sister’s. “The end of all things.”

“Then, what do we do now?” Meira took Emil’s gesture of comfort but Galadriel could tell her daughter would not allow herself to look scared.

“Now, we have to find out where this Door of Day really is,” Galadriel decided and pulled on all her strength to keep steady for her children. “And we have to do it, before Celeborn does.”

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: MORGOTH’S OFFER

Galadriel knew little else but pain as she opened her eyes. It seared through her skin like wildfire, blinded her, made her head pound. She could barely blink and in the first moment of regained consciousness, she did not know why she should. Why she should not lie still and still yet until the pain would gracefully fade. But then she felt the urgency. She had to fight her way back. There was still something left to do for her.

She blinked once more, forced herself to, and saw specks of light overhead. Sparks. The air was hot. There was fire. Somewhere close. Dry grass caught aflame. That was why everything smelled burnt. Then, sound returned to her. And with it, more urgency. Roaring voices, bellowing like thunder, and clanking, rattling swords. Swishing blades. Screams of agony. This was a battlefield. Galadriel lay incapacitated on a battlefield! On the most important battlefield she had ever been.

She struggled further awake, forced herself to remember. Uneasy with the overwhelming sensation that she had forgotten something really important. Why was she here? What was her purpose? She bit down, teeth on teeth, her jaw locked, swallowing away the pain as she tried to sit up. In the distance, she saw a thin, moving line of pure fire. A whip made of flames.

“Meira,” she whispered to herself.

Her daughter. Her daughter was fighting one of Celeborn’s beasts of darkness. Celeborn. Him and his army had attacked the city by the Nurnen Sea. They had been too late to stop the onslaught. She remembered that dimly. And Meira with her whip. She had been training in the courtyard behind the White Tower with the thing. Readying herself for battle. Galadriel saw more sparks overhead, her vision went blurry, and a stroke of pain forced her back down to the charred earth.

***

There had been sparks like these, in the forge beneath the White Tower, before they had come here. On the eve of them riding into battle. When they were waiting for the last of their allied soldiers to join them. She had entered the shadows of the forge and gasped for air in the sweltering heat.

Mairon worked alone, pounding away on a formidable weapon, so vigorous and engrossed in his task, he jumped a little when he became aware of her presence. He paused only for the briefest moment to acknowledge her, as he had to strike the blade into shape while the iron was still hot and could not waste time on pleasantries. Galadriel did not mind. She simply crossed the space between them and moved next to her husband, watching him work with this single-minded focus that was a testament to the expertise in his craft. He was a maker, a creator. And he created such beautiful, perfect things. If the reason for the fashioning of this, and another weapon before it, had not been so dire, Galadriel would have been able to admire his fluid and powerful movements even more than she did even so.

But as it was, the sword he was making symbolised not his talents but the danger that lay ahead. Still she watched. Suffered through the loud clashing noise and followed with her eyes as Mairon seemed at last content with his work and moved the blade over into a basin of water to cure it. It sizzled in the cold liquid and he took a long moment to soak it, before moving it to the side to dry off.

Only then did he turn his gaze fully on her. He looked worried. Galadriel expected she was his mirror. They did not have to say much. They both just sighed and he walked to her to cup her face gently. She gave him a weak smile and then dropped her gaze to the other newly forged sword.

“Mine,” he told her. “Sturdy blade. But light. A good conductor for my powers.”

“Will it make up for what you have lost?” She asked him, talking about what power he had relinquished to this life with her, to their children.

He frowned, and took the hand that wore the second ring of power, her wedding band, the companion to his.

“Not entirely,” he replied. “But I am still strong. I can still protect you. All of you.”

Galadriel nodded. “And the second sword?” She knew the answer but waited for him to say it anyway.

“Emil,” he told her. “With what power he wields himself, the blade will burn, slash through enemy armour and flesh. And keep our boy safe.”

Galadriel would have expected him to rain fire on the world, to concoct dark magic and become terrible. It was surprising that he seemed more scared than angry facing the battle that was ahead. And that notion terrified her. He would never say it, never acknowledge it, she thought, even if she asked. But she knew him like the back of her hand, she knew he was afraid. Likely more than he had ever been in all his millennia alive. Because there was so much to lose now. More than he had ever stood to lose before. Their home, their people, their kingdom, their children. Their beautiful children.

Galadriel had half a heart to forbid them to come along, to lock them away in the tower for safe-keeping but she knew it was futile. She could as well try to lock them in the dungeons and throw away the key. But Meira would take the door of its hinges and Emil would sweet talk the guards into breaking them with his silver tongue. They were both coming, they had made that very clear, both of them.

“I’m scared too,” she told Mairon.

The fact that he would not admit that he was did not mean she could not address it – and she needed him to be with her in her fear, to sit with it, so she could bear it.

“I will tear open the earth and cast Celeborn and whoever he tries to dig out of the Sea of Nurnen into the pit with my bare hands,” he promised her, feverishly, and brought her hands up to his lips.

“I know,” she whispered. “But I have to… I have to tell you, just in case–”

“Do not,” he interjected. “Do not say goodbye to me. I swear I will reduce this world to timbers before I’ll let any harm come to you.”

“Mairon,” she sighed.

“Don’t,” he insisted.

He would not hear her words. But she knew he could not fight her touch. So she twisted her wrists, shook off his restricting hands to bring both her palms to each side of his face and kissed him. It was a kiss that was younger than them, a kiss reminiscent of the first ones they had shared. Drenched in desperation and passion and reluctance. Back then, reluctance to feel how they felt about each other, now reluctance to lose all that had grown from those feelings.

He kissed her back like he was new, like he had not seen more than a handful of winters. Like he was just beginning to learn love. She felt much the same way. All the years she had lived, fell off of her with that kiss. And the hunger of a younger being overtook her. She allowed it.

Galadriel grabbed Mairon’s hair and pushed him, on and through the forge until his back hit a wall. She did not want to let go, she did not want to leave the cavernous chamber. It was too hot to breathe but she would have gladly entombed herself with him here if it meant never having to let him go. He felt the same urgency. She could feel the intensity through their minds’ connection, mirroring her own, amplifying it until all she could sense was him. She saw flashes of memories of them together, hear her own voice reverberating in his skull, telling him she loved him.

His hands were all over her body. Holding her firm, pulling her close. Ripping at her dress that was damp with sweat already. She did not care. She needed more. She needed everything.

“My love,” he whispered once he had grabbed a fistful of her hair to pluck her face off of his, seizing her up. “Here?”

Galadriel let her pinching his stomach be enough answer and he understood her easily.

He would not allow her to tell him goodbye but she let him know in her own way. She did not stop until he lay beneath her on the warm stone floor, panting, covered in sweat. Mairon took it in stride, gave as good as he got. Except when it was over, he wouldn’t look at her.

***

It wasn’t until they were on the road South that his eyes found hers again but he still wouldn’t ride with her, instead letting her bring up the rear with Emil while Meira and him stayed at the front. She understood the impulse, as she felt it herself with her children. She could not look at either of them long for a reason she opted not to interrogate, something foreboding and glum. Emil, quiet beside her, was her mirror and she could tell he was shielding his thoughts from her. Not that Galadriel would have attempted to pry. The thought of her children being scared like she was, but for the first time in their otherwise peaceful lives, made her sick.

They spent hours like that, riding in uneasy, ponderous silence, until a very out-of-breath and very green young soldier charged at them on the back of his horse, galloping until coming to a sharp halt beside them. But even as his horse stopped, the ginger, freckled-faced boy fell over his words.

“Your grace.” He panted. “The king requests your presence at the front of the trek. There is a wizard, come to speak with you.”

***

On the battlefield, Galadriel forced herself upward once more, biting away the pain in her side and her hand mechanically went to the source of the sting, between where her breastplate ended and her thigh guards began. When she brought it back to examine it for blood, it came back with grime and dirt only. So the damage must have been beneath the surface. That was better. The damage might be greater but it was easier than continuing her fight with an open wound. And she had to return to battle. She knew it the moment she saw the flaming whip hit the earth ahead of her yet another time and heard Meira wince as she fell, jumping out of the way from one of the pouncing beasts.

With weak knees, Galadriel got back onto her feet, adjusted the straps of her armour, steadied her fist around her sword and charged. She did so almost blindly, her head spinning still. Meira’s energy, her fuzzy, agitated thoughts called out to her, it pointed her in the right direction. Galadriel felt pulled to her daughter, as if drawn by a current, and when she joined her, it was almost as if Meira guided her strikes as well.

Together, they drove the beast back and for one brief moment that felt longer than the world, Galadriel caught a glimpse of Meira’s eyes, shining red with the reflection of her whip. She was beautiful. She was furious. And oh, she was terrified.

***

Meira had looked a little bit like that even while they were still on the road. Galadriel and Emil had ridden up, Emil falling behind to ride by his sister’s side who was talking to Elrond. Galadriel, for as brief as she saw the two, could tell Elrond was doing his able best to distract Meira from what was coming. To make her laugh even in the face of carnage. Something about the sight triggered something in her, something that felt like the memory of a dream, but Galadriel could not linger on it. She had business to attend to.

Next to her husband, rode a wizard on a white steed.

“Gandalf,” she said, greeting him with the more common of his names and the wizard inclined his head, though there was not much joy in the reunion.

Mairon looked no happier and Galadriel supposed he already knew what news Gandalf had joined them to share.

“There is no easy way to say this,” Mithrandir told her, not bothering with greetings, as indeed, Galadriel did not require any, not when their guest looked as troubled as he did. She preferred the truth right out. “I am afraid Saruman has fallen in with Celeborn and together they are on their way to release Morgoth from the Door of Day and bring on his return to Middle Earth. To bring about his reign of darkness over all the worlds.”

***

Galadriel had been almost glib about it, as if Saruman joining Celeborn’s efforts had only marginally worsened their odds. But now, fighting in the mud, she knew she should not have discarded the danger so easily. For they were not only fighting the beasts and the elven warriors that had once more fallen under the spell of darkness, they were fighting them armoured with mithril, which Saruman had also – somehow and undoubtedly guided by Celeborn’s darkly influenced whispers – concocted into potions.

It had taken some observation and a cut to the side of her face to realise it. And getting up close to one of the warriors. Their skin was glowing, veins in their exposed faces ran silver, and Galadriel had seen a couple of them drink from little slings wrapped around their armour - and whenever they did, the glow pulsed, the veins glimmered. And their eyes… their eyes glazed over with a white shimmer, as if they were undead. But they were not. They were made of power.

Their strength doubled and tripled. Their strength almost matched that of the beasts. It was a formidable use of the mithril, one she could never even have dreamed of - yet it seemed such a logical idea to have. Why merely clad your soldiers in the precious ore, when you can infuse them with it from the inside?

The King and Queen of the Southlands – with their allies from Lindon and Gondor and the orcs from the mountains, dressed in their own heavy armour from head to toe to protect them from the sun – had the higher numbers but Saruman’s mithril magic made Celeborn’s soldiers powerful beyond measure. Ten of them could easily wipe out a hundred of their men. It had been the perfect strategy to keep their host occupied and looking the other way, while Saruman and Celeborn had broken apart in secret to look for the Door of Day.

***

Fighting side by side with her daughter, Galadriel couldn’t help but divert a bit of attention to Mairon and Emil, reaching out to them with her mind. For they – as soon as Celeborn’s deception had been noted – had broken away from the fighting, to chase after them, moments before Galadriel had gone down from a blow to her side. They had been accompanied by Mithrandir and ten of Elrond’s most ferocious elven warriors. Now, Galadriel could not tell if they had already succeeded in their endeavour, though she doubted it. For the only thing she could feel was that they were still alive – and that they were scared.

“We have to find them,” Meira yelled over their own efforts, casting her whip at the charging beast ahead of them, as if sensing her mother’s train of thought.

Galadriel nodded and focused on her strength and the power of the ring around her finger. She let it engulf her, taking reign of it once more, feeling it out like a current, a stream she tapped into. She felt her skin tingle with it and her vision zero in at the beast that dodged Meira’s whip with its clumsy, heavy bones.

This was good, it meant the creature was preoccupied – it never saw her coming. Galadriel lashed out, her hand outstretched and her voice booming as she hurled a curse at it. A great wave of energy burst forth from her hand and it flung the beast far and wide until its broad back hit a rock. An ugly crack rang out, even over the noise of battle and their attacker fell to the ground, lifeless.

It took Galadriel a moment to come back to her senses, to release her hold of that great, terrible power and have it release her in turn. It had been a while, but wielding the power of the ring had not lost any of the toll it took on her. It always made her feel like she was teetering on some unseen edge. And when she met Meira’s wide eyes again, Galadriel could tell her daughter knew it exactly. She didn’t look scared, however, she seemed almost envious. Alas, there was no time to tell her about the pitfalls of great might and what price always came with it.

“They are by the sea,” Galadriel shouted to her daughter, for that was where she felt Emil’s nervous energy reverberating back to her. Meira nodded, and then they both ran.

“Meira! Galadriel,” a voice rang out behind them, stopping their heedless charge.

It was Elrond, out of breath. He has just struck down an opponent and lost his helmet in the process. He had blood on his head and hair but Galadriel could tell from his fierce look that it was not his.

He looked from her to Meira, where his eyes lingered and again, Galadriel saw something oddly familiar in this. Something neither of them could know yet but Galadriel did. If they survived this, Elrond would make an offer for Meira. If they survived this, Galadriel might consider granting it. Now, there was no time to linger on the thought, though.

“I will cover you,” Elrond said, understanding their effort and objective.

Meira nodded, pried her eyes away from him in turn and they continued to press on while Elrond overtook them and swatted off would-be assassins left and right, clearing their path. Meira fell into step with her mother and they took each other’s flanks.

They covered a league and had rounded a hill, left behind the chaos of the battlefield when suddenly Celeborn found them. He must have become aware of their approach and had returned to finish them off. He stood tall and imposing. Her long lost first husband. Her Celeborn. Only it was not Celeborn. Not really.

It was a version of him, a dark spectre. A warped fraction of the man he had been. Compromised and tarnished. He barely looked like himself. If there had been time to, Galadriel would have mourned him, would have felt compelled to look for ways to free him of what must have been agony. But there was no time. Because as soon as he had appeared, his eyes black and skin ghostly pale, riddled with icy blue veins, he attacked them. Or rather, he attacked Meira, which was when Galadriel saw flaming red and whatever pain she still carried in her body was swept aside by rage as she hurled herself into Celeborn’s path of destruction – and her daughter out of the way.

The elf snarled when he saw her, although she could not be sure he even recognised her fully. It was not until she got close enough to his face to see the fury behind his dark eyes, that absolute, consuming hatred.

“This is the end of you, witch,” he rasped, a gurgling, unnatural sound that cut to her soul.

She did not answer, instead she brought her sword down on his. He parried with ease and a speed that spoke of preternatural abilities, of the mithril potion that must have run in his blood as well and those born from Morgoth’s special corruption. He was just like those other beasts she could still hear roar from the battlefield behind them, with as little mercy. A few heartbeats into their confrontation, Galadriel understood that she was fighting for her life.

“Go, Meira!” She called out blindly, seeing the whip slash from the corner of her eye, knowing Meira was trying to help – but Galadriel knew she had to get her daughter away from Celeborn and back to her father.

She repeated herself with more urgency when she heard Meira argue and then turned her head away from her assailant, just for the briefest of glances. Their eyes met for a second and Galadriel put everything into that glance, all of her urgency and pleading.

“Your father and brother need you,” she yelled. “Go now!”

Meira reluctantly began to move, Elrond beside her, when Celeborn attacked once more and took Galadriel's attention back for himself. The Queen of the Southlands stood her ground.

It was a terrible back and forth. Whenever she thought she had gained ground on him, he would strike back harder and Galadriel was pulling from the strength of the ring for every move she made in retaliation. It seemed like Celeborn was not tiring, it seemed like he did not have the capacity to. She needed an opening, a distraction. The only chance she had to defeat him was if she got close enough to land a deathly blow with her sword.

Galadriel thought fast. The only thing she could think of to do, was a long shot at best. And it entirely hinged on the sliver of a chance that there was still something left of the Celeborn she had once loved. She had to try – and so she parried a whack of his weapon and stumbled backwards to put some distance between them.

“I am sorry!” She cried out. “Forgive me!”

Celeborn paused, just for a moment, but he did – so Galadriel retreated another couple of steps and kept speaking.

“I never meant you harm,” she yelled. “I still have love for you.”

This reached him, she could tell. Even as he kept approaching her, something flickered in his cold, dark eyes, something she remembered.

“Silence!” He shouted, as if to shake the effect her voice still had on him.

“I have loved you for a thousand years!” She shouted back, her eyes flitting to a nearby rock formation, calculating that if she got the high ground, she could finish him.

She just needed him to be preoccupied enough with her words to not notice her make her way there.

“Please, Celeborn, forgive me,” she urged and moved closer to the rocks. “If you still have an ounce of love left for me, stop this madness!”

He lowered his sword, just a fraction and just for a moment – but it was enough for Galadriel. She made a daring dart towards the first rock and drew from the ring as much as she could to jump off from the elevated spot and as Celeborn, startled, tried to adjust his stance, she was already soaring, twisting her body and her sword arm in mid-air to strike swiftly, and strike true.

She landed back on her two feet within a heartbeat of his severed head.

It gushed blood, his eyes were still open in shock and as his head rolled down the slight slope to where Galadriel had landed, she leapt out of the way. Then she screamed from the top of her lungs. Before the scream had even fully ebbed, she keeled over and threw up violently what little she had left in her.

She had just killed her first love. Celeborn. Her sweet, gentle and kind first husband. She did not dare turn around and risk another glimpse of his body – or his disembodied head. She could not stomach it, could not suffer it. She could not face the truth of what she had done, she had to keep moving. If she turned around now, she would not go on. She would be lost. Her family, she reminded herself, her family needed her. So she wiped the sick away from her lips with the back of her muddy and red-splattered hand and ran on as fast as she could. Past the hill, fighting the tears, to where she saw a faint glow in the distance. Eerie against the darkening sky.

That was when she heard it. That laugh. That horrible, raspy laugh she had heard when Númenor fell. She did not see anything yet, but all her fear and dread pooled low in her belly, because she knew deep in her bones that she was too late. She quickened her step all the same, scaled the last hill before she would arrive on the shore of the Nurnen Sea – and stopped short on a moderately elevated, rocky precipice overlooking the bay when she got a glimpse of what was unfolding there.

At first the halt was her own, instinctual, a necessity to take stock of what she was heading into – but in the next moment she was bound to the spot by a different force. Her eyes darted to the source of the bind, which she felt like a tether, like a leash which end was in the hands of… Saruman, the White.

He was at the centre of the scene beneath her, one arm raised towards her, one towards her children and Elrond further down the beach. They were also frozen where they stood. But they were alive, which was why Galadriel looked further. Off to the side, close to the water’s edge, Mithrandir knelt over a figure on the ground and Galadriel’s heart sank when she realised it was her husband. Mithrandir mumbled an enchantment at him, undoubtedly trying to whisper him back to consciousness – and Saruman, too, was mumbling an incantation. Though his was Black Speech and it was directed at the sea floor. The sound of his words twisted Galadriel’s insides into a knot.

She struggled against Saruman’s magical bind but could not move a finger, could not even scream. Then her eyes met the darkened orbs of the wizard, endless pits of deprivation, and he stopped his chanting. Instead he laughed. That terrible laugh again – though it was not his. Galadriel knew. It was someone else’s. Something else’s. And then that laugh morphed into a growl, but not of flesh but of earth. Behind Saruman, where there was nothing but water, back where it glowed red and dangerous from the depths, a deafening rumble grew. Like thunder, as if the ground was moving. As if the very foundations of the world were coming apart.

Galadriel could do nothing but stare in horror as a giant stone arch rose from the waves, as tall as a castle. Within the arch there was nothing. And at the same time not nothing at all. It was solid, blinding darkness. Like light but the opposite of it. It was the depth, it was eternity. It was something she could feel more than she could see it, or even comprehend with her old elven eyes that had grown so accustomed to the absolute reality of Middle Earth. This was the Door of Day, it could be nothing else. And the rumbling and the laughter and the horror, all of it lurked at the other side of it. Just waiting to creep out.

Then everything happened at once too fast to do anything about it and so excruciatingly slow, it was the most gruesome, indulgent torture to witness it.

Beneath her, Mairon stirred back to life, sat up mechanically and then saw his children, his wife, Saruman’s horribly triumphant grin and the Door of Day looming tall and unforgiving behind him from the water. Galadriel caught his eye for just a moment, though Mairon did not seem to really see her. He was filled with a panic large enough to bury the sea, scorching enough to burn Galadriel’s insides just from the energy he gave off.

No, she thought to herself, with her own tint of panic mingling with his. Oh no, no, no.

I swear, I will reduce this world to timbers before I’ll let any harm come to you, she heard him say in her head, the memory barely a day old.

She could feel him drawing from the ring, drawing from the pits of the beyond of whatever power he still possessed, and once more, the ground growled and the laugh echoed from beyond the door.

Saruman echoed the laugh. Which was when both Mithrandir and Mairon charged at him. Only to reach the empty air as Saruman soared upwards, straight like an arrow, both arms outstretched. It was as if his fingers reached to the core of her and pulled, like the wizard was attempting to suck her soul from her body. And it hurt. It hurt everywhere. Like a thousand pricking needles.

Mairon understood that Saruman was hurting those he had bound as soon as Meira and Emil started screaming. The sound of her children in agony only doubled Galadriel’s pain – though she learned in the same moment that she could not make a sound of her own. Which made it obvious Saruman wanted only the children to be able to cry out. He wanted Mairon to know that they hurt. And Mairon was going crazy with it beneath her. He hurled curses at the wizard, in Black Speech and every other language he knew, though they seemed to ripple off of Saruman like raindrops from a pane of glass. Meira screeched. Mairon cried out in naked frustration in reply. Galadriel struggled once more to break free, which was when Saruman’s black eyes found hers again.

You can not save them, his voice rang out in her mind. Though really, it was that voice from beyond.

You are nothing, Galadriel. That voice continued. You are less than a speck of dust. You can not change the fate of this world. You will watch everything you love shrivel and die.

She wanted to scream too, louder than her children. Loud enough to reach Mairon. Loud enough to make him see that he was being misled. That he was being manipulated. She almost felt like she could loosen the grip. Almost! – That was when the first sliver of the Beyond broke free from the door. It emanated from the shining dark like a sunray bursting through clouds. Not solid but there, definitely there. It engulfed Saruman, who shuddered, almost as if in pleasure. Galadriel’s whole body prickled, feeling like she was dissolving in acid. Her children screamed even more horrendously. Briefly, she longed for the sweet release of death. Then it got worse.

Some unseen force struck Mithrandir. His body flew across several feet down the shore and he landed hard, like a lifeless sack of flour. Galadriel could not tell if he was dead, there was no way to and no time to think about it. Because then the next ray of darkness emerged from the blinding shadow of the door and it hit Mairon square in the back.

No, Galadriel heard herself think. Please, no.

She begged to every deity she had ever known and to any she had come to learn about, even those that the humans had made up. For a moment, she heard only her inner voice pleading to someone, anyone for mercy. Until that other voice filled her head again, but this time, it was not speaking to her. She still understood every word.

Morgoth spoke. He spoke to Mairon. And he would not be ignored.

Hmmm. My trusted servant. He sounded like a snake. Old as time itself and more evil than Galadriel could fathom. You have failed me.

Galadriel struggled, forced to helplessly watch as her husband’s feet left the muddy sand as he too was levitated into the air by this ray of darkness. By Morgoth’s yet formless but powerful arms.

Might I have my revenge on you now and let the wizard consume your family.

Foul. The voice was foul. It felt foul. It felt like it was drowning her. It felt like the end of everything. It laughed again, this time it was dripping with ugly, biting mockery.

Your family?! You pathetic, useless creature. There is no love for you, no love but mine.

No. This was Mairon thinking the word. It was Galadriel’s thought, but he shared it.

No? The foul voice echoed and then the horrible laugh rang back through Galadriel’s skull a thousandfold, so much more gruesome than before. It rang over the tortured cries of her children. I will let the wizard take them.

NO! Mairon was in agony, too. But with that agony, came blinding fury. The air danced with it. As if charging itself with his rage. Morgoth’s power rippled with it, as if itself was a separate life form. One that delighted in the misery of the creatures it sought to subjugate.

Ahhh, there he is. Morgoth all but snickered. My erstwhile servant. For all the years you have served me well enough, I will be merciful. I will allow you to save them. – All you have to do is take the wizard’s power. Just reach out your hand and he will perish and relinquish the hold on your children. All you have to do is join me once more… Sauron.

No! Galadriel was screaming into herself, as if into a cavernous pit. With pure desperation. No one could hear her, she could not make a sound. Mairon could not hear her! NO!

Return to me. Morgoth hissed.

NO! Galadriel could think nothing else but this.

Save them…

Galadriel willed herself to focus. To feel past the painful bound of Saruman, or rather, that of Morgoth. It was like trying to put out a fire with only her mind. But she had to try.

Save them, Sauron…

She could not let her husband succumb to the Shadow. She had to free herself, so she could free him. He would destroy the whole world to save them. She could not allow it. She had to find a way to save them all for him. But for that, she needed to move. She forced herself to feel her body, used the pain to mark out the borders of herself. She focused on the ring on her hand. Her wedding band. Nenya. The second ring of power. Its power beckoned her. Morgoth was distracted. His hold was firm but not unbreakable. If she only focused enough–

SAVE THEM!

It was the height of her own panic that finally made her spring free from the chains placed on her – but something else, too. For it was in that very same second that Morgoth’s hold on her slipped for a moment of triumph, of a brief pettiness that seemed both beneath him and too gruesome for Galadriel to comprehend. Because when she could move her limbs again and took a step forward, she could tell the world had tilted on its axis once more.

Because Mairon screamed out a gruelling cry, which was then echoed by Saruman, who within a blink, fell to the ground at a speed that should not be possible and Mairon jerked in mid-air, enveloped by the dark rays, by Morgoth’s hold – and then stilled. Suspended. Endless. Otherworldly.

Galadriel froze again, his time out of her own impulse, even as she saw her children and Elrond topple into the mud beneath her from the corner of her eye. She was paralysed. Ahead of her, in a cocoon of darkness, was the worst thing she had ever seen. Mairon – with spiky shadows slithering around him, as if to make an armour, as if to place a crown of despair and darkness on his head – opened his eyes, and they were as dark as the blackest black of the deepest, starless night.

Morgoth laughed. That foul, disgusting, debilitating laugh – and he made Galadriel listen to his command, as she felt the love of her life slip away slowly, diminish into the gruesome hold of his former master.

Now, Sauron… pave the way for my return, my servant. My beautiful, terrible slave.

Chapter Text

TWENTY-NINE: THE AWAKENING

Time was suspended. At first, Galadriel thought it was her shock which made it appear so but soon, she realised that indeed, even the air around her stood still. She had no idea how or why, only that her husband hung in the air like a ragdoll, his eyes pitch black – and behind him loomed Morgoth, a shadowy figure, a monster with unearthly, leathery tendons, in the process of creeping through the Door of Day. Galadriel wasted not a moment more on pondering the why and how of this phenomenon though. She knew she had but this one chance to step in and turn the tides of fate. So she focused all her might on seizing the opportunity and reaching out to Mairon, to her husband, through their minds’ connection.

It felt like hitting a wall. There was a cloud of darkness shrouding him in like a mourner's garb. Morgoth’s ugly grip was fast around him but she persevered. Bit by bit, she willed herself through the mist until she felt something beyond the paralysis that had taken hold of her beloved. That something was pain and struggle. But more than that – it was him.

Mairon, she thought his name in her head. Aimed squarely at him like a battle ram, and again and again until it became a deafening screech. MAIRON!

It was then that the world lost its bounds. It fell away. The shoreline, the scene of destruction beyond it. She felt Mairon desperately reach back for her and Galadriel willed another world, another plain of existence, into reality. She did not know how, only that it had to be this way, and so it was. She pushed more, reaching back for him, pulling him out – and when she blinked next they stood, as they had a hundred years ago, on a shaky raft amid a rolling, endless ocean. She was startled for a moment by the stark familiarity of the scene she had not recalled in such a long time.

They had been there before, the two of them. Back when he had first revealed himself to her. When this false world had been one of his creations. When he had made her the offer of ruling Middle Earth beside him. When she had accepted and sealed her fate to stand by his side, come what may. She took a step forward as he came to, started upright, holding on to the sole mast left on the raft, disoriented and confused. But himself. Thank the gods, himself again. Free of Morgoth’s influence for the moment.

“Galadriel,” he panted, stumbling forward to grasp for her.

She hurried over to him, clasping his face in her hands and kissed him hard on the mouth to help steady him.

“My love,” she breathed and kissed him again.

“I cannot fight him off,” he said. “I don’t have much time.”

“You can,” she assured him, moving her hands to his shoulders to hold them tight, tether him to her. “You must.”

“My power is gone,” he uttered, shaking his head. Then his eyes flitted around. “How is this happening? How am I here? With you?”

“I do not know,” she confessed.

“Maybe because I have another master now,” he whispered, his eyes landing back on her.

“Maybe,” she agreed. “And he can’t have you. Not while I still have a say.”

Then an unseen force pulled at Mairon. It must have been painful because he winced and crumbled, falling to his knees in her arms, taking her down with him.

“No, no no no.” She panted, grabbing him. “You must fight. You must not let him take hold of you.”

“He already has it,” Mairon said, closing his eyes to the anguish, all his muscles tight, straining. He fought his eyes open, meeting hers with naked terror. “I do not know how to keep him out. I am too weak.”

Galadriel was increasingly desperate, her own fear mirrored in the face of her beloved, who clung to her for dear life.

“Yes, you do,” she insisted and dug her fingernails into his arms. “You are not weak. You are Maia, you are a God. You have power. You have this.”

She grabbed his hand with hers, their two Rings of Power, their wedding bands around their fingers, catching the dim light coming from the cloudy sky above.

“You have me,” she told him. “You have cunning. You can take him in. Make him believe he has you. And then you cast him out. And send him to return from whence he came.”

“Galadriel, you do not know what you are asking,” he told her, squeezing her fingers between his as best as he could as a new wave of invisible torture made him writhe.

“All I know is that I will not let you go without a fight,” she insisted. “And Middle Earth with it. If you fail, we lose our home. Our children will lose their home.”

Mairon winced again.

“Think of Meira, think of Emil,” she beseeched him. “Think of our people who rely on us to be their protectors.”

“I can’t.” He gasped for breath, his voice pained and barely carrying above the crushing waves. “He offers me every ounce of power I have ever longed for, if I only give in.”

“False power, false promises,” Galadriel reminded him fiercely. “The offer is empty. You will be nothing but his slave once more.”

“I know,” he mumbled. “But I can’t–”

“You can,” she assured him and dragged him back to his feet. “And you will. Remember who you are. Remember what we have built together. Remember what you are fighting for.”

Again, she took his head in her hands, willing him to open his eyes once more and look at her. They were shining with tears, with fear, with desperation.

“You have power, you have free will. You can choose to free yourself from the darkness,” she promised emphatically. “Draw from the rings, draw from me. I believe in you. You are redeemed. If you cast him out, you will be redeemed forevermore.”

There was some fight returning to him. As he squared his jaw and his shoulders, she could feel at least his determination. He forced himself upward, to stand taller. And finally, he nodded.

“I am here with you,” she promised. “You can do this.”

He dipped down just a little, to press his forehead against hers.

“Are you ready?” She whispered. He shook his head ever so slightly.

“If I don’t see–” He began but she cut him off.

“Do not say goodbye to me,” she ordered, recalling his words to her in the forge, echoing them with urgency. “Do not dare.” And then she repeated: “Are you ready?”

This time, he nodded.

Galadriel took one last deep breath with him in unison and then at once willed them back into the present and gave all of the power she could muster over to him. To spread something almost like a shield around his heart; her love around the essence of him. The true, precious core of him that Morgoth had sought to taint, the very soul she had spent the last hundred years to find and to heal, and she held around it firmly. She felt it, even as the mist took him again, as the wall of darkness encased him once more and she returned to her body on the hill over the shore.

For another heartbeat, the world was in suspension, the way she had left it, and then time resumed and with it, Morgoth’s gruesome laughter. Only now, Mairon’s eyes were clear and bright – and locked on Galadriel’s.

“I believe,” she mouthed and he only gave the slightest indication of a nod.

Then her husband straightened in the air and said: “Yes. I am yours, master.”

Morgoth cackled, the air filling with static, lighting struck over the ocean as dark, tumultuous clouds appeared overhead, forming out of nowhere. Mairon’s eyes darkened again but Galadriel could still feel his heart, could still feel him draw from her strength, from the ring – even from their children who ran towards the shore-line, screaming for their father.

Morgoth himself was creeping further out of the door, feeling victory in his grasp. She could tell the monster already foresaw his reign over Middle Earth, already felt the terror of all the living things that he drew his satisfaction from. He believed he had won. And that belief made him blind. For as he raised Mairon higher into the air and his dark tendrils formed armour of pitch black around his body, and just as a spiked helmet formed around her husband’s head… Galadriel felt it.

It was a pulse of energy, of light, breaking forth from Mairon himself. From that core she guarded so fiercely, from deep within him where Morgoth could not reach. And then it all happened so fast.

With a might she had never felt, she was brought to her knees as Mairon drew from her strength along with all of his. On her finger, the remnants of Nenya in her wedding band seared her skin and then… and then… disintegrated. Mairon was burning through its power from a distance, burning through hers too. But she grabbed the dusty grass beneath her and held firm.

I am with you, she thought at him. I am yours.

And then Mairon screamed and his black armour burned away. Everything burned away, as he turned in the mid air, leaving him naked as the first day and surrounded by a light so blinding that Galadriel could not see beyond the silhouette of him. His scream was preternatural, louder than anything she had ever heard. That was when Morgoth’s guttural laugh died. The monster had no real face, could give no real indication of shock or horror. But its shadowy tendrils shivered and reached out all at once to grab Mairon once more. They could not penetrate his light.

There was one last pull for power. Once more Mairon grasped for every last bit of strength available to him. From the corner of her eyes, Galadriel could see Emil drop to his knees, then Meira – and saw Elrond hurrying to catch her before she hit the ground.

Mairon screamed once more, impossibly louder. And finally, the tendrils receded, shrivelling. In a burst of energy that swept across the shore, across the battlefield beyond, across the whole of Middle Earth – at last – Mairon cast the monster out and shut the Door of Day closed behind it. The earth shook with it, the pressure bent trees and shook the foundations of everything. It knocked the wind out of Galadriel’s lungs.

But then it was done. It was over.

She looked up, her eyes finding Mairon’s once again, where he still hung in the air, surrounded by godly light that had already started to dim. He smiled, just a little. And then he plummeted to the ground.

“NO!” Galadriel called out and had a hard time getting on her feet again.

If he had taken this much strength from her, she did not know how much of his own he had burned. She ran down the slope of the hill as fast as she could. Below, her children found their footing again and ran too. Meira reached Mairon first, then Emil, who draped his cloak over his father’s exposed body. Both of them moved aside when Galadriel made it there.

She wasted not a second to scoop Mairon up into her arms and pull his torso onto her lap. He blinked his eyes open. He smiled. She could not. She knew. She could feel it. She could already see him fading.

“No,” she whispered and her tears sprang up without her having even the hope of a chance to stop them. “No, you can’t leave me.”

“I will see you again,” he muttered, weakly reached for her, then the children, who got closer yet, crying as well. “I am redeemed.”

“Please,” Galadriel whimpered. “Please don’t go.”

“I love you.” Mairon breathed. “All of you.”

And then he closed his eyes. And faded, fully. Galadriel could feel the moment he let go and it drew the sharpest yowl of pain from her that had ever left her body. The grief was instant and indescribable. She felt like she became untethered to this world at once. It was as if she had fallen into a sea of acid, as if her insides and outsides were burning off from her at the same time. It was a blinding pain, a roaring mess of sound that deafened her until from the depths of her despair a tiny little voice whispered in agony:

This is not real. This is not how it happened.

It was dull at first, a small little notion that seemed to come out of nowhere. A mere thought that rang out over the blood rushing past her ears. But soon it became louder.

This is not real. This is not how it happened.

Galadriel looked around, at her children who cried over their father’s body. At Elrond who stood by, looking sympathetic but keeping a respectful distance. And behind him, across the sea, the dark clouds gathered. More and more of them. Unnaturally dense. Unnaturally dark. They looked like nothingness encroaching. Galadriel felt like she could not breathe. Mairon in her arms lay lifeless, unmoving.

This is not. How it happened.

Galadriel shook her head. She looked away from him, looked at her children. Meira was fighting a sob, pleading for her father to wake up. Emil’s porcelain cheeks were streaked with tears. He knew better than to bargain.

This is not real.

Galadriel heard it now as clear as day. And it grew louder. More urgent. Beyond the sea, the sky got even darker. But the others did not seem to care, did not seem to see. As if only Galadriel was aware of what awaited in the distance. They had just warded off the end of things. But she knew with alarming urgency that this was the end – what lurked beyond those clouds. The thing that raced towards them. That was the end. Only it was not really. Because it was not real.

THIS IS NOT HOW IT HAPPENED.

She closed her eyes shut. No. It couldn’t be. It could not. She buried her face in Mairon’s blood-streaked hair. He smelled like smoke and sweat. He smelled like him. Like the man she had woken up next to so many countless mornings. And now she would never get those mornings again. He was dead and gone and out of this world. The thought made her throat close up. The notion pierced her heart. Her head rang out from the pain. And from that thought in fervent response:

THIS IS NOT REAL.

But that could not be, could it? She held her dead husband close, pulled him in. Meira’s quiet cries seemed far away. As did the rolling waves hitting the shore. How could this not be real? But then how could Mairon be dead? How could her love be gone?

THIS IS NOT HOW IT HAPPENED! THIS IS NOT REAL!

Galadriel winced, the voice boomed in her head. And then it hit her. With the might of a hammer to her chest. An impact so physical, when she opened her eyes again she expected to find herself in the water, covered in sea foam. But she was still there, surrounded by her family. Though they moved slowly. As if once again, time itself had slowed down. And suddenly she knew. Suddenly she remembered. She remembered it all.

This is not how it happened.

This was not how it happened. Mairon did not die. Sauron did not defeat Morgoth. Morgoth never broke through the Door of Day. Celeborn had never fallen under his influence. He had never travelled to Númenor. He had never… he had never left her. Because she had never left him. She had never married Mairon. She had never saved the Southlands with Halbrand. She had never agreed to join Sauron on that raft.

This is not real.

Her mouth fell open in a silent gasp as it all came rushing back. As that door she had closed within herself the first time she felt Meira grow inside her, burst apart. Mairon had never redeemed himself. She had never married him. They never had… she never had…

“Meira,” Galadriel whispered but her daughter could not hear her. “Emil.” Her son did not look up, instead clasping his father’s lifeless hand.

Galadriel never had children. Not these children. A name came back to her. Celebrian. Her daughter. The daughter that was… real. She remembered blonde hair and a strong temper. She remembered Elrond and the way he had looked at Celebrian. He was looking at Meira like that in this very moment. But the moment wasn’t real. Nothing was real.

She tried again to say her children’s names but no sound would leave her mouth. In the distance, the invisible Nothing that no one but her seemed to see drew closer and closer. This was the end. This was the end of the trial. She remembered it now. Remembered it all. Why she was there. What she had had to do. What had happened to Middle Earth in reality. That all of this… the last hundred years of her life… they had not really happened. They had been a test. For Mairon. For Sauron. Who lay dead in her arms as the world she created for him receded, its edges closing in on her. It was all ending. The trial was over. She had to return. To the real world.

“Meira,” she tried again and this time, her daughter looked up and the horror she read on her mother’s face must have looked like despair over the loss of her husband – not the loss of everything that it was.

Nevertheless, Meira moved closer to her mover as Galadriel gasped for air. The pain of losing her husband – whom she could not believe she loved at all – was only trumped by the pain of the impending loss of her children.

You have no children. Not these children. They are not real.

Her mind reminded her. She winced at the thought and Emil, spurred on by the grief in her sob, joined them, brought his long arms around both of them. Galadriel cried, Emil’s hand on her shoulder, pulling at her the way he had when he had been just a babe. Meira burried her head in the crook of her mother’s head and Galadriel was shaking. Moving frantically two wrap her own arms around as much of her children as she could reach. She could not let them go. How could she let them go?!

They are not real. They are not yours.

“No,” she whimpered. “No, please, no.”

Her children cried with her. In the distance, the world burned away as the Nothing spread. As the end of the trial caught up with her.

“Meira,” Galadriel sobbed. “Emil.”

“We are here, Mama,” Emil promised.

“Mama,” Meira echoed her brother. “We’re here.”

She pushed her forehead against Meira’s. Her first born, her daughter who had her father’s heart. Emil’s arms pulled her in. Her kind, wise son. Everything around Galadriel was spinning. The nothingness raced towards her. She could not see the horizon anymore. Only the Nothing coming closer and closer and closer! Her children. Her children!

She screamed their names and then everything stilled, halted, paused. Galadriel stretched out further, closed her arms around her kids. And then the very world dissolved. She cried, dug her fingers in, scratching her nails into her daughter’s scalp and her son’s hand. The ground beneath her faded. She lost her balance, reached out for her children…

… and jolted up on cold, hard stone. On an altar in the dungeons beneath the Halls of Mandos. After the end of all things.

With her fingers clasping the empty air.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER THIRTY: THE MIGHTY RELINQUISH

Galadriel’s ears were ringing, her hand still stretched out into the empty air. It was as if the moment were endless. The moment it took for her mind to register that she existed no longer on the battlefield, on the shore of the misty Sea of Nurnen, but contorted in her grasping of nothing, half lying on a stone altar in the depths underneath the Halls of Mandos. And the realisation that had to follow, which could not be swept aside, which demanded to be had, was still unbelievable and crushing: That none of what she had been through for a century had been true, had been real. That it had all been a lie.

She slumped back down, barely catching herself on her elbows and dimly registered movement to the right of her. On instinct, she whipped her head around to the man lying left of her though, on the other altar. Mairon. In Halbrand’s skin. No, not Mairon. Sauron. The vile sorcerer. World Destroyer. Lover. Monster. Husband. Demon. The weight of all those contradictions made her chest feel small, constricted, as if trapped inside a crushed plate of armour. He laid beside her, sleeping, peaceful looking, void. She faintly heard her name uttered, coming from the other side and saw a wisp of white hair and white robes from the corner of her eye - but her head would not turn. She was transfixed by the creature at rest beside her.

Her hands were rigid fists, her heart bursting apart. She had fought in so many wars, had endured so much hardship, but the pain she felt in this instance outmatched it all. It was overwhelming. Her children! Her family. Her reality. None of it was there anymore - just the husk of the enemy beside her. The enemy she had loved more than her own life - how could she? How could she have done it? And worse, a million times worse… How could she be without now?

Again, her name was said, and a thin-fingered hand wrapped around her arm, beckoned her to fight her way back to proper awareness, to return fully to the living - but the instant loss of her previous hundred years was too much, so too was the regret, the confusion, the darkness, the pain. It encroached on her, unstoppable - and then her mind did the only thing it could to protect her and folded. And with it, Galadriel’s body, which slumped back down, blessedly unconscious.

***

The air around her stirring was the first thing Galadriel became aware of before she finally came to her bearings again, her eyes still closed, her body and mind still warm and somewhere far off. She was faintly anticipating the wash of agony awaiting her, as soon as she would regain full perception, so she tried to hold on to the lingering sensation of dream. But all too soon, consciousness wormed itself back onto her and engulfed her in the whirl she had dreaded, even in sleep. She opened her eyes at last and found herself staring at the intricate Elven woodwork, carved artfully into the canopy above her bed.

The sheets she lay in were cool and soft but Galadriel felt hot and uncomfortable as the entirety of it all came back to her. Her body was on fire, her heart beating fast and furious. She knew what the feeling was that loomed at the corner of her being - and was glad to be fully alone in the beautiful quarters, still in the Halls of Mandos but topside now, as she figured from the soft light shining on her through the arched pale stone windows. The feeling was… shame. Red hot and searing. Galadriel sat up and forced herself to face the sensation, to face what she had not been able to in the dark of Sauron’s prison. That she was a traitor too, that she had lived a life sharing a bed and her heart and her life and… her children with the incarnation of evil thrust upon the world by careless Gods.

Her children. Her children that never were. They were her pain now. Sauron was shame. But Meira and Emil - so real to her just hours prior - they were now open wounds that had never existed. Phantom limbs that you lost but never had to start. Her palm found her eyes by itself, blocking out sight and light for a moment to further gather herself. She had no idea how to begin facing all that had transpired but she knew she had to. The other option was ceasing to exist and that was impossible, not when she still had a task to fulfil.

A task which she figured that, while she would surely be granted a grace period to regain her bearings, would be due soon. How long until the Maia called upon her to continue the trial, to present her verdict? Surely not long now. She was terrified about the questions sure to arise from that third last trial - and worse even, if they had their ways of knowing what had happened during it. Surely they knew. Surely they had been watching. The shame came back flaring up like wildfires. What if they would tell? That Galadriel, the Lady of Light herself, had forgotten everything to lie with the enemy? The King of Darkness.

Skies and heavens, and what about Celebrian? About Celeborn? An image of Celeborn’s black eyes flashed in her mind and made her gasp at the recollection. Not real. This version of him, corrupted by Morgoth. He was not real. But, and this notion shook her to her core, it could have been. Because was that not the point of those trials? To see how the course of history could have changed if a few little things had been different? Had this not been Sauron’s taunt? That - had she taken him up on his offer back on that forsaken raft on the Ocean - he would not have become the Dark Lord but the ruler that he had been with her, the God that had given up his divinity in order to build a life and legacy with her?

The shame flared up again hotter. Not just because she had grown to love him but because he, for all his vileness and arrogance, might have been right. That stung perhaps most of all. Was it her fault, then? The way it had all happened in actuality? Was she to blame for not taking his hand when he had offered? Was she the reason Middle Earth was plummeted into Darkness for an age?!

“You could not have acted any differently,” came her answer, softly from the other side of the room.

Galadriel had not even heard him come in, let alone fortified her mind from such an intrusion. Then again, she was glad to have a reply and glad not having to have spoken out loud to receive it.

“Mithrandir,” she said, turning to face her friend, though it took a lot out of her, feeling red, hot blood rushing to the tips of her ears.

He knew now, he must have heard it all circulating through her own mind. Her shame and why she felt it so. He must have been judging her. How could he not?

But Mithrandir shook his head ever so slightly. Moving further into the room and closing the door behind him. He kept a tactful distance but there was no sign of vitriol or even judgement on his features, just kind eyes that looked upon her full of the reassurance and affection you could count yourself lucky to receive from only your oldest friends.

“So you know? All of what transpired?” She asked him, needing but dreading the answer at the same time.

“Only what I could gather from your unruly mind,” he told her - but did not seem angry or disappointed with her at all. “But none of it changed my fondness for you, Galadriel. Or even particularly surprise me.”

Galadriel sat up straighter, her face contorting into a question mark. Mithrandir almost rolled his eyes.

“He has always been particular about you, all of us were aware of that,” Mithrandir said evenly. “And the tether that binds the both of you is near as old as Middle Earth itself. There was always a path that could have brought you two together.”

“And that path could have been our salvation,” Galadriel murmured, unable to hold his gaze any longer, guilt and doubt biting at her insides. “I could have saved us all.”

Mithrandir shook his head. “Oh no, no, no.” His voice was so warm, so without accusation, it made her face him again. “Even if you had accepted his offer when he first made it, you would never had stood by long enough to bring about any real change. The artifice of the trial was the one thing that made it possible to see the outcome of this third one. You would never have stayed with him in reality.”

Galadriel smiled despite herself. She had reasoned thusly with herself in the turbulence of the false century before. The memory of that time was still fresh in her mind. Still, affording herself grace did not feel right. There was more to tease out here. No reassurances good enough to soothe her searing shame.

“Have I betrayed myself, my friend?” She asked Mithrandir, not bothering to veil the raw fear behind the question. “Have I done the unforgivable?”

Mithrandir studied her, took a deep breath and tilted his head, a bit like a wise old owl, and had the world not been as out of bounds as it was, it would have tickled a laugh out of her.

“By loving something? And loving it enough to transform it?” he asked. “Decidedly not. Surely that is the one thing which never requires forgiveness.”

“And yet, it was not real. He was not transformed, it was all a lie,” she replied, more to herself, the realisation stinging in its freshness, the wounds of having lost her children to non-existence still so raw, it felt like her soul was bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. “And the reality is that he is Sauron and he condemned us all.”

“And yet,” Mithrandir echoed, “he was defeated. He is in chains and we are sitting in judgement.”

“How real are his chains if there can be no final sentencing?” Galadriel challenged, all the details of her task to put him through the trials becoming ever sharper in her recollection of what happened before. “I knew I could not fail in proving that he is redeemable because expelling him from this plain to join his seducer is not an option. And keeping him chained in the bowles of these halls is not either. So where does that leave me? Where does that leave my task?”

“I expect they will call on you to give your verdict,” Mithrandir said calmly, infuriatingly so.

“And what should that verdict be?” Galadriel asked, sincerely demanded, because she had no idea what was expected of her.

What insights or great design for what to do about Sauron could she give that the Gods had not thought of yet? Why - yet again - was this responsibility cast onto her, when she was just an elf? Surely, history had put similar impossible challenges to mortals but in the face of it all, her immortality and connection to Arda did nothing to make her feel more confident in her abilities to overcome it! And then Galadriel stopped short.

Her mind caught on her own thought, on just that one word. And suddenly there was a spark of inspiration. An idea. A possible path out of the insanity that was the task ahead. It hinged on a lot of things. It was a flimsy hope at best - but not impossible. This alone felt monumental, the fact that she had had an idea. But Mithrandir was not aware of the shift, instead busing himself with a little scroll he was producing from his robes.

“I have words from Celeborn and Celebrian,” he informed her, tipping his head down to the parchment in his hand and then put it on her bedside chest. “I expect they do not expect an answer right away, but delivery should not be delayed, I decided.”

Galadriel sighed. Her family. Her real family. The actual husband she had spent millennias with. With him, the actual daughter she had birthed. Not Meira, the half-Maia-half-elven child with her dark hair and a wild temper… but Celebrian, a golden haired elven woman with a silent, iron strength and quiet resilience. And Arwen… her beautiful grand-daughter who had chosen a mortal life for love. There it was again. Galadriel swallowed down her nerves and turned back to Mithrandir. To the matter at hand. Namely the letter that sat unopened just in reach.

“How long was I gone? From them?” She asked, because she now knew that the last hundred years she remembered had not actually happened.

“It has been about a moon’s turn since our arrival here,” Mithrandir replied and then he bid his goodbye to let her rest.

Galadriel did not rest. Instead, she stared at the scroll debating if she could even open it and read her family’s words when she felt both like she had betrayed them and also, strangely, that she resented them in a disturbing way for not being the false family from the trail which she missed like a limb.

***

It took her until sunset to open the letter. And it was only prompted by receiving word that she was expected to give her verdict at first light. In order to collect her bearings for refining the verdict expected of her and so she could think in some earnest and urgency on her tentative solution to the whole issue of what to do with Sauron now that the trials were done, she felt like she needed her full concentration and could not allow the little scroll to pull her focus away from what awaited her. So at last she took the parchment, unrolled it carefully and felt a pang of guilt as her daughter’s careful scroll unfolded on the page, speaking of admiration in the face of Galadriel’s head of the call of duty and promising to be there for her at the day of sentencing for support. Galadriel was glad to already be sitting down. So tomorrow, she would not only attempt to give a verdict to the greatest villain Middle Earth had ever seen, she would also be reunited with her family, whom she felt she had slighted so thoroughly that she was not even sure she could look them in the eyes.

As she imagined the reunion, she realised that she had pictured herself in her young form but that was wrong. She was older, they knew her as her old self. She willed herself to return to her aged form but there was too much turmoil inside her, the onslaught of worry was too great. She could not waste time on that either. She had the night to collect her thoughts, her memories, what Sauron had revealed of himself during the trials, what remained of Mairon - and how to proceed with both of them.

Thus, Galadriel put the letter aside and accepted that she would face the Valar and her family in her youthful form and she would have to face whatever questions this would bring on as they came. Now, she needed to find the calm to work through her intended verdict and mull about the strategy that had formed in the back of her mind which could change everything once over, if he… if what she now believed to know of Sauron was really the truth. Though knowing what the truth was had proven difficult at best for Galadriel in the most recent past. The perspective of seeing the creature again as early as the morrow loomed over her as well, as dark and foreboding as the endless ocean that lay still as ever past her balcony at the feet of the Halls of Mandos in the night. Fretting about it did not aid in her objective though, so she pushed this too off her mind to join the uneasiness about reuniting with Celeborn and Celebrian and having to be accountable for the trials in front of the stony-faced Valar. Alas, the only way out was through, she told herself, and sat down to formulate her verdict and her plans for the correct sentencing.

***

The morning came relentlessly and Galadriel had to force herself to keep still as she was designated a rocky stump to sit down upon as the Valar, giant and unspeaking, filled into the space as if floating. They were still looming, their voices still only forming in their minds, booming through Galadriel’s skull as they started the proceedings.

Walking in, she had briefly caught Celeborn and Celebrian’s gazes. She had nodded and smiled as best as she could have but that was the extent of their reunion - not that she minded. She would rather get her verdict out before speaking to them. Rather present her solution before they had a chance to change her mind. She knew after a sleepless night, that her path was the only way forward. In order to focus, Galadriel shifted further towards the Valar, blocking out her family and the other spectators, about a dozen or so, and cast her attention to the tribunal, who soon enough asked her to give her verdict before they would convene amongst themselves to debate her findings and then return to agree with her proposed sentencing or offer their own. For this, Sauron would be brought up from his cell to hear of his fate. She could not ponder seeing him again so soon, if she did, she would crumble and she could not afford that.

Instead, Galadriel took a deep breath to steady herself and gathered the little piece of parchment she had used to make her notes the night before. It took her three to four sentences to steady her voice. But she spoke. And everyone listened.

“I was tasked with the impossible,” she began. “My task was to put Sauron through three trials and reach a verdict, the very one that is expected of me today. One that does not condemn him to the Void or a life in chains. Because casting him into the Void may unite him with his master Morgoth and he can not stay here in his chains because the very idea of him will seep into the very bones of these halls and condemn whoever spends too much time in his vicinity.”

“Before the third and last of his trials, Mirthrandir told me of the prophecies which are the reason we cannot cast out Sauron. For even now Morgoth might still hold power over this realm and all the others, always whispering, always sowing darkness. It is said he could return one day and bring about Dagor Dagorath, the Battle of Battles that could threaten all that is, was and will be. And here, among us, Sauron lives on as a temptation to Morgoth’s corruption. Each of them lies like a shadow over everything there is. And I had to walk among the shadow and find a way to turn it to light. And walk with it, I did. The question posed to me was as grand and as complicated as it was clear in the end: How can true evil be measured? How can a creature utterly compromised by darkness return? Is it even possible? And how do we safeguard against it? Even simpler, the question is: Can such a being as Sauron be redeemed? So that we might all live in safety.”

“I have seen his redemption, with mine own eyes. And that is one answer,” Galadriel declared and paused for a moment to allow the low murmurs of the spectators, forcing herself not to try and listen for her family’s reaction to her revelation and hurried to continue. “However, it was under one single circumstance alone and that circumstance was my staying at Sauron’s side, swaying him with great effort away from the path he took in every other version of events. The only possible outcome where he did not turn to utter evil after his initial corruption through Morgoth, was by my side.”

“This is a damning thing about his true nature, it seems. Of all the paths he may have taken, only one led to his redemption - and this was heavily facilitated by another. It evolved through standing side by side with me, not out of his own volition. But true evil would not have succumbed to even one path, I believe. How could it? True evil can not be satisfied, yet he was. He returned to the light at my side which means, he is not truly evil and what is more… I believe there was explanations for his turn to darkness. Not excuses. But explanations. Such is more than can be said about Morgoth, about true evil.”

“Elaborate,” one Valar ordered, cutting Galadriel off and she nearly jumped.

She had not expected interjections. But here they were.

“Well, Sauron was made,” she replied and tried to speak from the heart because she had not written any of this down before. “He was created as Mairon. As an innocent. And then he was corrupted. He was corrupted by his fatal flaw, his desire to create and his belief that it was him who could create something greater than Eru himself. In his warped and misguided way, he wanted to make something better, to build something good and beautiful. He believed this would give him peace. Adoration. Safety. When it did not, after Morgoth perished, there was a moment where he could have returned. But his own cowardice and the reproach of the Valar prevented this. When he came to me all those ages ago, trying again, I believe he still believed he could reform. The one time I heeded his call, he did. When in reality, I cast him off as well, his path was forged and it led to darkness. Again: It is not an excuse. But it is an explanation.”

Galadriel paused, nervous now because she was afraid that saying this would be used against her somehow. That her mere understanding of the fact that there had been a cause and effect to Sauron’s evil would put her in conjunction with the evil somehow. But the Valar kept silent and the murmuring among the spectators stayed tame as well, so she cautiously continued.

“Thus, I do not believe that Sauron is true evil. There is a capacity for goodness. For reform. Still, I recognize that there needs to be punishment. Retribution. For the destruction and the horror he caused. Simply undoing his chains and letting him walk among us in Aman is as impossible as casting him out of the Door of Night. But what is my verdict? What is the sentence I propose for his crimes? And do I believe it will keep us all safe?”

Galadriel took another deep breath and another gander at her notes. Her heart beat fast in her chest, drowning out everything else. She hoped that she had the right idea. But only time would tell.

“We can not strip him of his powers, he has to lay them down willingly. Which is the reason we are even here. If he could be neutralised just on our whim, it would have been done ages ago. But it cannot be done, much in the same vein that one cannot eradicate, one cannot kill an idea, or a movement. The idea has to change, the movement has to become superfluous. Sauron has to have a say in his fate. This is now obvious to me as it has been obvious to you all along. So I see no other verdict and no other sentence than this.”

Galadriel looked up and crumbled the parchment in her sweaty palm. This was it. Her moment of truth. Her proposal.

“I believe we have to offer him a different option, one that he can choose and not feel like he is only losing something but gaining something as well. I believe that the potential for reform can only survive in the face of goodwill, of faith and grace and a not inconsiderable capacity for forgiveness. As established, we can only live, if he lives. We can only be safe, if he chooses to be safe with us. And for us, to an extent. My verdict is that Sauron can be redeemed and that he should be redeemed.” Another breath. “And the sentence I bring forth here today is that… is that Sauron be given the choice to strip down his powers and become mortal, become a human man as he so long pretended to be, and live out the rest of that mortal life on Middle Earth in return for his freedom to live out his days there unperturbed. The freedom of a mortal man to live a peaceful life where he can create beautiful things in the scope of his capabilities, have a home, and somewhere to belong. It might seem too sweet a deal - but I believe this is the only thing that allows us all to live in peace.”

Galadriel had barely finished speaking when the murmuring kicked off again. The spectators where openly opining about her verdict, as she expected. But still, she was glad when the Valar called them all to order and thanked her for her testimony. The audience paused for as long as it took the Gods to announce a brief recess and have their debate as well as allow for the guards to bring up Sauron from his dungeon to hear his sentence. And as soon as they disappeared, all hell broke loose.

Galadriel was swept to the side by Mithrandir and a few guards held back those of the spectators who called for her head for her words, her lenience, her preposterous sentence. But while she tried to keep her head down, she heard the clear voice of Celeborn as it rang out over the shouting.

“Calm yourselves,” she heard him below and then drop his voice to a more sensible level. “You have heard everything she has said, have you not? There is no other path to peace. Sauron cannot be cast out and he cannot remain in chains. This is the only sensical sentence to bring forth, you have to know that!”

And bless him, he spent another long while explaining the same thing in different words until the last of the angry onlookers dispersed. This was who Celeborn was - in any reality where the evil of Morgoth never touched him - and it was the reason Galadriel had loved and married him. It was why, when he was finally done appeasing the crowd, she ran to him and hugged him in a way that suited her young form much more than her older, more dignified persona would have. She hugged Celebrian who followed in her father’s steps in much the same way.

“You look different,” Celeborn remarked when Galadriel took a step away from them to view them better, one hand of theirs in each one of hers.

“I am afraid this whole ordeal threw me quite backwards in time,” she explained sheepishly. “And my form adjusted accordingly.”

“It is well,” Celeborn said, smiling almost ruefully. “It brings me back.”

Galadriel just tried to take both of them in. There was more heartbreak lurking around the bend, ahead maybe just hours, maybe minutes until the Valar would return and somehow she knew that Celeborn and Celebrian were aware.

“I meant what I said to your detractors,” Celeborn declared, as if he had heard her thoughts. “It is the only possible solution.” He squeezed her hand softly. “And I know that it will be enough.”

“Celeborn,” Galadriel said urgently, not really sure how to follow it up - but he shook his head softly.

“I know,” he said sadly. “I know what you have to do.”

“We do, mother,” Celebrian agreed. “And we love you.”

Galadriel barely had time to say anything more or even properly embrace both of them, because then the Valar returned - and with them, the guards brought in Sauron.

Celebron and Celebrian fell in behind Galadriel as she froze on the spot. She saw nothing but Sauron’s lifeless body as it came floating in, propped up by magic. She could feel the air rich with it, vibrating, and felt the current coming from the Valar, all of them. They together kept him under, something Galadriel was sure was not sustainable forever. Finally, he arrived in the clearing in front of the Valar and stood upright. And the glimmer was lifted. Sauron’s heavy chains - around ankles and wrists - jangled as he came to.

Galadriel could not help the pang of sympathy she felt, watching as all of the memories from their third trial together flood him and unravel as they had for her. He had also not been aware of the trial being one as it happened, much as she had when she had made herself forget. So now, he understood at once that the last hundred years had not happened. That he had not found love, prosperity, a kingdom and two magical children… but that reality had played out much differently. Much more dark, and much more lonely. The look on his face when he startled forward and barely caught himself from toppling over in bare, naked pain was too much for Galadriel. She had to turn away and faced the Valar instead, forcing herself not to do something unforgivable like cry for Sauron.

There was a low hum coming from the Gods and for some reason, mostly because she could see Sauron lift his head from the corner of her eye, look only briefly in her direction and then at the Valar, Galadriel understood that they were addressing him alone, in the privacy of his own head. She tried to quell her curiosity at what they would have to say to him and sure enough, before long, the Valar turned their voices back to the whole of the hall. And especially to Galadriel.

“To surmise your earlier verdict, Galadriel, Lady of Light,” a low voice rumbled from an unmoving mouth. “Your judgement and sentencing is that Sauron shall live among the men of Middle Earth once again, though stripped off his powers, as a mortal human, to perish at the end of that life and join Eru like a mortal?”

Galadriel kept her eyes on the Valar as she now felt Sauron’s gaze fall upon her face, as hot as if a knife was brandished in her very cheek.

“Yes.” She replied.

“For this to come to pass, Sauron has to relinquish his remaining powers of his own volition. They can not be taken from him by force.”

“I am aware.” She replied again, awaiting the inevitable next question - and when it came, she exchanged a quick glance with Mirthrandir and then Celeborn and Celebrian who stepped in closer, both touching one of her arms in support. Almost imperceptibly, Celeborn inclined his head and Galadriel drew in a sharp breath upon his silent encouragement.

“Why would Sauron agree to these stipulations?” The voice asked, as expected, and Galadriel knew what she had to do.

“Because I would be accompanying him, as his jailor and safeguard,” she replied.

More murmurs. More opinions flying from the end of the hall. Celebrian grabbed hold of Galadriel’s hand once more. But Galadriel only felt those eyes on her. Daggers. She felt him staring. Sauron’s eyes so sharply focused on her, burning as if they still hung atop Barad-dûr. She hardly heard the Valar’s next words anymore.

“Your return to Middle Earth means the forfeit of your own place in Valinor, Galadriel, you will share the fate of your granddaughter who has passed on an age ago, as a mortal,” the voice put into simple terms what Galadriel had already understood the night before when she had come up with her plan.

“I accept this fate,” she replied mechanically, staying the course and declaring it loudly before she had a chance to change her mind. “My eternal life for his.”

It has to be this way, she thought like she had many times before. It has to be me. That is the only way he will agree to the deal.

The disembodied voice gave a low rumble, echoed by the other Valar. It was an odd sound, a mixture of assent and scepticism that took a moment to ebb off. Meanwhile, Galadriel still felt her cheeks prick with the heat of Sauron’s gaze upon her and she took great care not to turn her head as the single voice swelled with others joining in. Apparently Galadriel’s proposed sentence and solution had them convinced - though it remained to be seen if their prisoner agreed. If Sauron would truly and willingly relinquish his Maia powers to live out a mortal lifespan on Middle Earth and then die a commonor’s death. With nothing to sweeten the deal other than having Galadriel as his jailor.

“Do you, Sauron, the Fallen, accept this sentence?” The voices asked as one and Galadriel could not escape the compulsion to turn her head towards him at last.

He was looking right at her, not at the Gods, not at anything else, and his features were utterly unreadable. Though his eyes… his eyes were soft and shining green in the flickering light of the torches lining the walls of the hall.

Mairon, she thought. Those were Mairon’s eyes.

His voice was steady as he spoke for the first time in his own trial.

“I accept,” he replied, and never once took his eyes off of Galadriel.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: MORTAL

Galadriel had forgotten the way the wind felt when you were standing at the bow of a ship. There was a particular quality of the vericity in which it hit. The bit of sea spray that would hit a cheek. The forward motion that held a promise of renewal in whatever shape. This felt familiar. But the way her stomach rumbled unbecomingly as her fingers closed around the wooden railing, was anything but. The bout of utterly foreign sea-sickness she was doing her utmost to keep down, was new. It also had a reason. Galadriel, the elven queen, the lady of light… she was human now.

There was a certain sense of frailty that she had become instantly aware of when the Valar stripped her off her immortality at the golden harbour of Aman. It had felt like quite the inverse of the sensations of being given godlike powers ahead of the trials. Then, she had felt invincible, light, mighty. Not she felt heavy and restricted. Everything from breathing to walking to thinking, somehow, was harder than she ever remembered it being. Remembering itself was harder, she thought. Not that she was forgetting her life but the memories themselves were a lot more fuzzy, not as shaped as they had been before.

She held on tighter to the railing and swallowed down the bile threatening to come up and wondered, not for the first time, what she was doing exactly. If she had made a terrible mistake. Sauron, or Mairon, as he had requested to be called henceforth - which in itself felt like an extension of the entire confusion of Galadriel’s current reality, the actual reality - had been put in a state of heavy sleep once more and lay somewhere in the belly of the ship. Before, she would have been able to sense him. The sheer power, the sheer evil he was would reverberate through the currents in the air, in the very world itself, but that too, was gone now. Because he, too, was mortal now.

She recalled the moment he had relinquished his powers, still in the face of the Valar, still at his sentencing. At this point, she had still been her old self so she could actually feel him giving them up, felt the current flare up once in a way that made the hairs on her arms stand up, and then cease to exist. The sudden loss was enough to make his knees buckle and break the stare at her he had held for the entire time he had been awake. And so, the mighty had fallen, by his own decision, without so much as a word, let alone resistance.

That had been the reason, she reminded herself. His immortality for hers. His eternal threat for her eternal safety. It was done now - and there would be a time for Galadriel to grieve all she had given up, all that she had lost. But at present, the scope of it was too great to comprehend, especially in combination with the loss of her elven faculties. Her mind had simply shut it down, locked her out of the sorrow she would have to face eventually. There was a large part of her, that was almost glad for it, too. She didn’t think she could have said goodbye to her husband and daughter at the harbour, had she been able to feel all of the pain of leaving them behind. Still, she had embraced them both and was loathe to let go. But they were brave, where Galadriel did not have the strength to Promising her that they would go on always remembering in love and fondness her sacrifice, promising that they would love her forever. Promising her, that they would be fine, eventually. Galadriel could only hope to do the same. Although, even if the next couple of decades of her life, tied to the side of her prisoner would be sheer torture, there was some solace in knowing it would be a finite one. For both her and the creature she would guard. The man he now was.

Galadriel tried to not think about Mairon, but she found that her preoccupation with him and what the future would hold for them, even how she would face him, once they came face to face again, kept her nausea at bay, so she kept ruminating on all of the confusion, not getting anywhere. It was a wonder that when they did, she still jumped when he came up behind her an undetermined amount of time later. The shock of being startled shot through her body in a new, human way, that unnerved her.

She forced herself to be brave though, as brave as her family had been. And looked at him. He held her gaze for a moment, then looked away, out at the sea. Outwardly, they both still looked like the day he first asked her to join him, on that make-belief sea on that make-belief raft. Here they were again, surrounded by waves, floating on wood, unmoored in an ocean.

“You startled me,” she said, because the silence was growing taut and she felt she now lacked her previous resistance to withstand discomfort. She wondered if it was her humanity, her immediate past or his proximity to blame.

To her chagrin, Mairon did not seem to share in her discomfort in silence, because he did not say anything.

“What?” She finally asked when she could not stand it anymore.

“I, ah, I fear for the first time in my excessively long life,” he replied eventually, “I am at a loss for words.”

“That, indeed is a first,” she snickered, harsh out of sheer overwhelm. Everything about this was exceedingly strange.

But Mairon let out the most normal-sounding, human kind of snort she had ever heard - which in itself was deeply disconcerting.

“I remember this,” he said and she chanced a peek at him, but he was still looking out over the waves.

“Remember what?” She asked, picking up the note of irritation loud and clear and wondered if he could too.

“You’re not afraid of me now,” he noted evenly. “Because I’m mortal. You weren’t in the trial either.”

Now was Galadriel’s turn to fall silent and not dare to speak again. The mention of the trial felt like he was poking at an open wound she would rather not he touched. For many reasons that had pervaed her days and nights ever since the last one had ended.

Confusion, shame, and loss. Oh, the loss.

“We are going to have to talk about it at some point,” he declared and moved an inch towards her.

Galadriel immediately retreated, taking the equal amount of distance, stepping away from him just as far as he had stepped in. But if he was hurt by the rebuffal, he did not show it.

“The trial was not real,” she simply stated and trained her eyes at the water as she saw him turn his head to her from the corner of her eye.

“Was it not?” He asked simply and it infuriated her. She also did not have an answer for him so she stayed still and silent. His voice carried easily over the sea-spray as he kept talking in spite of her. “I miss them, too. I miss our children.”

The mention of Meira and Emil nearly made Galadriel topple over the edge of the boat.

“Do not speak of them,” she ordered coldly, much as to herself as to him. “We do not have children. We do not have… that past. You only have yours. Destruction and domination.”

“And yet,” he began, with that same cruel self-confidence and ease that had always unsettled her - because worst of all, he made sense. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“You’re here for me,” she spat back.

“Exactly,” he said, which was the worst thing he could have said. Mostly because it was true.

Galadriel, however, could not allow him to know that she knew it well. That in fact, she had counted on it. His redemption, costly as it had been to win, had evidently happened. Him relinquishing his powers and his eternal life for the meager trade-off of spending a scarce few mortal years with her was unrefutable proof. And she had known. She had known he would give it all up for her. So what did that make him, if not a completely different creature? And what was she to do with that?

“I’ll leave you to it,” Mairon said, as if he had heard her thoughts and retreated. “See you on land, my lady jailor.”

Landfall came sooner and swifter than Galadriel had expected, or even liked. Their time on that ship which found its way by some ancient magic that required neither sense nor effort on their part, had been a reprieval of sorts. A piece of borrowed time where they were in the inbetween. Where their fate was not yet as solid as it would be. As they landed in a quiet bay, their ship floating all the way to a sandy beach without even the appearance of running on land, Mairon let down the ladder and flung the bag with riches down before him before disembarking. Galadriel followed and as soon as her feet touched the sand, the ship turned to dust behind her. Mairon did not seem fazed. Instead, he rummaged through the bag and turned the handful of gold chalices therein in his hand one by one. This should ensure they would get a comfortable start on this transformed Middle Earth. Given that gold still had any value here.

***

Galadriel should not have worried about the gold retaining its value. This had stayed the exact same. Everything else, however, was different in the world of men, which they were now to be a part of.

Coal and steam, she learned quickly upon the brief track from the beach to the nearest city just around the river bend, had completely transformed the world. Magic, elves and wizards were a thing of the past, the stuff of legend. But what the men, dwarfs and hobbits had been able to build with coal and steam was nothing short of magical in itself. The town they arrived at was not large - but for every sturdy brick house that rose into the sky, there was an equally sturdy chimney (a new word she picked up from a sheer endless list of vocabulary she had not been around to witness in its inception), expelling white smoke. These chimneys covered the whole city in an everlasting fog, even on sunny days. But you could still make out the airships overhead. Flight. The peoples of Middle Earth had discovered flight.

It was disconserting what change had happened through the ages Galadriel had missed on this place, though comforting too, that whatever destruction her companion had rained over this realm, life had prevailed. Which was not to say that there was peace in any sense of the word. In lieu of more formidable foes, the humans, dwarfs and hobbits had taken to fight wars amongst themselves - for creed, race, religion or land. They had amassed such a dense history of wars, pain and destruction that her history, Galadriel’s history and that of her people had gotten washed away by the current of time. The humans belived the elves to have been magic of sorts, yes, but also human. There had been some retention of the elvish language and a huge field of science and schooling dedicated to deciphering old ruins and scrolls but the humans had claimed the elves for themselves. Galadriel did not seek to correct anyone as her and her prisoner finally arrived at an inn they chose to be their first home in this strange new place, themed to the old ways and the elves, which the humans simply called “the old men”. Someone had painted the walls with a banderole of elvish nonsense words and Galadriel had to smile despite herself.

“Cow, life, peterprab,” read Mairon from the wall as they stood in front of a wooden shelf-alike contraption that said “reception” on it and Galadriel supressed a grin. “Poetry.”

Galadriel was glad she could mask the grin she could not fight as friendliness towards the innkeeper who greeted them then.

The man was on the older side, older than her and Mairon’s bodies suggested they were and they quickly understood that they had to pretend to be married in order to be given rooms, because the so-called “suite” had two adjacent rooms connected by a living quarter with its own kitchen. When asked how much one of their golden chalices would get them in terms of nights, the man went very pale and muttered something about a year. So this is where they stayed for the first stretch of time in their new lives.

The innkeeper had been very ready to wait on them hand and foot and so Galadriel had hurried to instruct him on getting them what they needed most to blend in fast - information and clothes. That first night, the innkeep’s daughter returned from the busy shopping streets (another new word) with clothes that were current - a host of big, frilly dresses for Galadriel and suits for Mairon, as well as more pedestrian garments - and a host of books on the more recent history of Middle Earth. Galadriel appreciated not being looked at as a novelty outside after they had walked into the city in their wildly out-of-fashion clothes that had still seen Aman.

And she tried to be outside a lot. The first couple of weeks, she avoided Mairon as much as she could, only making sure that he did not cause havoc. But a few months in, it was clear that he had no interest in ruining whatever time alive he had left by reckless vilainy. Instead, he had found employment as a smith which came with a spacious apartment in the same building which he and Galadriel could move into and she started working at a museum as a translator of Elvish.

***

It was on one of the first nights in their own appartment that they found themselves in the kitchen in the evening and mellowed down enough from months of what new normalcy that had settled down around and within them, that they got to talking. Mairon was delighting in a soup and bread they had been given by the smith’s wife and grinned at Galadriel with a raised spoon, poised to be slurped with abbandon.

“There’s something wildly more satsifying about food when you really need the nourishment, don’t you agree?” He asked her, downright chipper.

Surprisingly, Mairon had taken to being mortal like a fish to water.

“Is this why you agreed to this?” She asked him, athough she knew the answer - but she thought the time to talk about it had finally come. “For the joys of eating?”

“You know why I agreed to it,” he replied easily and there was that glint in his eye that he had taken to regard her with more recently - whenever he caught her watching him go about his day from time to time.

“For me”, she said and looked away from that knowing glance he threw her as he nodded. “But I will not be… what I was to you in the trial.”

She felt like this was the elemental thing to talk about. Because of the glint in his eye and the knowing glances and him catching her watch him go about his day so unfortunately often recently.

“We’ll see,” he replied and she could hear the smirk on his lips without looking.

It made her mad.

“I won’t,” she insisted and he grinned at his soup, loading a couple more fulls of it into his mouth. His lips glistened with the grease. Galadriel looked away. He saw it.

“As you wish,” he said in that infruriating way that said he was just counting down the days until she got weak.

But she would not get weak. She remembered who he was, what he had done. She remembered it even if the world around them had forgotten. even if he had changed. That did not take away the past.

“I won’t. You are not having me,” she insisted, more harsh than she had planned to, but he was making her feel helpless and hungry for something she knew she could not have, so she wanted to make him pay for it in a very selfish, undignified way. “So what do you have now? You could have stayed in Aman, found new minions. Revolt. Destroy the realm of the valar. Live to rule another day. You will die here.”

“I was dead there, just as well,” he answered her without missing a beat. “I would have always been dead.”

“Is that why, then, really?” She kept prying, hoping that if maybe he changed his original answer, she could escape what started to seem more shamefully inevitable by the day. “You want to die?”

“I want to live before I do,” he said, studying her. “This seemed the most prudent way. I’ve been alive long enough. And all this time I haven’t ever really lived. Except…”

“Except?” She asked.

“For the trial,” he said - and yes, she should have known. She had walked right into that.

Galadriel scoffed out of sheer spite. “So, I made you feel alive, did I?”

“Among other things,” he said. He was smirking still, she could hear it. “You gave me something I never thought I could have and that made all the difference.”

“A kingdom with adoring subjects?” She asked him and looked at his face again, wanting him to see her disdain but he just took it in stride, frustratingly.

“Love,” he said simply. “You loved me. When no one had ever loved me.”

Galadriel wanted to argue, disprove his words. But it was no use. They both remembered the trial. They both knew he was right. They had had two children to prove it. Even Mithrandir had known.

To have loved something enough to transform it, he had said. That is what Galadriel had done in the trial and the repercussions were sitting across from her in the kitchen of the home they now shared.

“And something else, too,” Mairon said while she was still trying to think her way out of this truth and she was too preoccupied to shut him up, so she just made a face for him to go on. “I was happy. Happy and loved.”

Galadriel almost laughed. “Sauron’s love and happiness - so, that’s what could have prevented all the death and destruction, then.”

“I told you from the start,” he said, which was probably the worst thing, because he had.

“You did,” she allowed. “That does not change what you really did, what really happened. I am not taking the blame for everything you did just because I did not join your side when you first asked.”

“I never excpected you to, I do not think anyone ever did but you, Galadriel.” He shrugged.

Galadriel sat up straighter - because there she had him dead to rights. “You did!” She argued. “You wanted me to acknowledge my part in your path, that I could have changed everything if I had chosen you.”

“Acknowledging it is not taking blame, my lady,” he reminded her, the honorific feeling strange, after having assimilated so thoroughly into their world where neither of them was royal.

“You’re so clever, aren’t you?” She asked, letting him know that she would not let him get away with re-writing history. He just grinned. “You seem very confident that things will change between us. But the trial was the trial. I could love you then because the worst of your dark machinations where still to come. But in reality all of it happened. The wars, the horrors.”

Now, for the first time, Mairon looked affected. Shame, she thought and could not really believe it. He looked like he was ashamed.

“I also told you, back in my cell after the first trial,” he said and dropped his spoon into the bowl of food, obviously having lost his appetite after all. “After I lost my physical form, there was barely anything left of me. Before that I had been vengeful, yes, angry, too - but also to be reasoned with. I could still design. Strategise. - After, I was… a husk. I needed power to sustain what little grasp I still had. Of what remained of my consciousness, over the world. That was not really me anymore.”

It was true, he had told her as much, she still vaguely recalled this conversation. Back then she had not heard him, she did not think. Now, having spent all this time with him… it was harder to ignore the sincerity in his voice. It was harder to keep from being empathetic. It was harder not to know the truth in his words. Now that she knew him so well, and every version of him. It was harder to not ask herself if maybe, if things had been different, she might have become the same abomination.

“I do not expect you to be with me as you were in the trial,” he said eventually. “But I do not think you’ll be able to keep this up forever. What we had was real and if I will not stop proving to you that I am different, and I will not, you will come back to me one day. - And if not, allow me to at least dream about it. It’s the only way I can sleep.”

Galadriel wanted to punch him. He made her feel for him, that bastard. He made her feel sorry for him. For him! It made her so furious she opted to not say anything and risk being truly vile.

Instead, she sat there and watched him make a decision. Namely to show her what else he used to be able to sleep at night. She did not think she wanted to see it at all but then he had already put the sketchbook he kept before her. Of course. Why should she be surprised? Mairon had always been interested in beautiful things, had always been an artist. So it really should not come as a shock that he was able to draw their past in Galador together. Yet, it knocked the air out of her. Seeing their kingdom, breathed to life under his expert stroke of kohl and pencil. And their children. She had almost forgotten the exact shapes of their faces.

Emil’s regal brow and Meiras wild eyes and her even wilder hair. But there, on Mairon’s pages, they were alive. The notion made her so weak, she was happy to be sitting down. She must have made some sort of tortured noise because then Mairon grabbed back the sketch book. She wanted to protest but then watched him swiftly rip out the page and hand it back to her.

“I’ve got nothing but time,” he told her, getting up from the table to wash up his dish. “Whenever you’re ready. And if you never are… then I’ll be just as glad to just have lived beside you. That is already the happiest I deserve to be, Galadriel. Do not think I don’t know this.”

He left her clutching the drawing of their children. And when she looked after him, for the first time she allowed herself to look for it. For the sign that maybe, maybe, maybe… there was a way back for them.

***

It took them years. Countless moments where Mairon proved himself to her. Through random acts of kindness. Most of them Galadriel did not even witness but heard about as he endeared himself more and more to the townspeople, embedding himself within the community so willingly, sometimes she even envied the love he got in return. Eventually, he took over the smithy from his aging employer who had no children of his own, and made a habit out of providing all sorts of help and assistance to thouse who could not afford his service. He helped build a new town hall, gave the remaining gold chalices to pay for saving a school that had fallen on hard times and so on and so forth. The only thing that gnawed at her was the question of why. Was he trying to prove himself to her still - or was the amassing of good will and affection from the city folk a part of it?

It was a cold day in the dark season, around the Winterfest celebrations, which had evolved from the Winter Solictice Celebrations Galadriel still remembered fondly from her trial days, that everything finally fell together. After quite a scandalous squabble in the town’s government, a new mayor was supposed to be voted in. Galadriel had heard about this at the museum but had not thought about it much, when a group of men, friends and aquiantances of hers and Mairon’s, came to their house with one unanimous bid to Mairon. They informed him that they had nominated him for mayor and he carried so much favour in the city that just agreeing to the appointment would seal the deal. And there it was again, power on a silver platter, ripe for the taking.

Galadriel sat up straighter at the kitchen table, her hairs standing up as she watched the back of Mairon’s head as he listened to the men. Something inside her told her that this was it. This was the final temptation. Of course, being what and who he is, power would come find him even here, even as a mortal man - now was the time it would be revealed, how much he had really changed. Galadriel half expected him to accept gladly and be carried off on a sea of hands propping him up in jubilation and devotion… but then he said no.

He was sweet and humble about it, but firm as well, saying he was flattered but that he had no intention of governing anything but his smithy and that the man who nominated him, a dwarf named Enoch, would be a much better fit, and then complimented them out of their home.

Galadriel watched him close the door and turn to her and she must have made a weird face because he gave her a puzzled look.

“What?” He asked. “Should I have said yes?”

Instead of answering, Galadriel felt herself fly out of the chair and into his arms.

The kiss did take him by surprise, and herself too, a little bit - but she was tired of pretending she had not been falling back in love with him and that… yes, at the end of it all, she believed now that he was changed. That redemption was possible. That love could reform and had reformed. And she took her shame about loving him and swallowed it. And after that day, she never looked back.

***

Ten years on from that day in their kitchen, Galadriel opens the door of the little house on the hill looking down onto their ever growing, ever smoky city. They chose this spot because up here, the sky is clear and if you squint, you can see the ocean. Not much has changed, not their professions, not their love. But their children… the three of them, they keep growing, alerting Galadriel of the changing times. Not that she minds.

They have two girls now and a little boy who just learned to walk. The latter has just fallen asleep. His teeth are still coming in, causing much screaming and ruckus, which is why Mairon took the girls into the woods to forage for mushrooms - but now the sun is hanging low in the sky and Galadriel excpects them back home at any moment. And as if on cue, as Galadriel breathes in the crisp spring air that is starting to cool down some - today is the first day one does not feasibly need a jacket against the breeze, signaling the slow arrival of summer - she can hear her eldest daughter’s bell like laughter.

Then she sees them. Her middle daughter charging down the hill at her, laughing, her husband with their oldest on his back, chasing after the child.

Galadriel admonishes them to slow down and be mindful but her children only obey half-heartedly, eventually chasing each other inside, both clutching paper bags with mushrooms they want to clean for pan-frying. They barely even stop to greet their mother.

“They are wild today,” Galadriel muses as Mairon leisurely walks towards her and presses a kiss on the top of her head.

“At least they’ll sleep quickly tonight,” he promises.

“If not, you can tell them an extra long story of Galador,” she tells him.

Galador is a fantasy kingdom for them, nothing more. But whenever Galadriel looks at their precious children, she can see glimpses of Meira and Emil in them. Their little faces, wild eyes, wild curls and both fiery and patient tempers. She will never get their trial children back… but sometimes Galadriel thinks that their spirits are with her, encased in the little bodies of their siblings.

“Or maybe I’ll tell the story of the one ring and the dark lord who made it… and how he was returned to the light,” Mairon muses.

“And the heroic elf who made him turn,” Galadriel reminds him, though there is no reprimand in her words.

“Chiefly about her,” he agrees and kisses her temple. “Always about her.”

“Or maybe you’ll just let Abrile tell you all about her dreams, that is always entertaining,” Galadriel says. “I am always amazed by her imagination. To listen to them about Meira and Emil…”

Galadriel trails off, it’s difficult to put it into words. When they had been little, Mairon had taken to telling the girls stories the prince and princess of Galador; Meira and Emil - and the stories had obviously resonated with the children because time and time again, they would both talk of dreams they had of them - and describe Meira and Emil so fittingly it was almost eerie. This only strengthened Galadriel’s hope that some of them had found its way back into their siblings, through all the realities, despite time, space and truth. But Galadriel knows she will never have certainty of that. All she knows is that she is infinitely glad to have them - even if right now, she can hear both their little voices raised, shouting coming from inside the house sounding the alarm of a sisterly squabble that demands her attention.

“I’ll go and help the children clean the mushrooms before they flood the kitchen or kill each other with the pans,” she tells her husband wistfully and peels herself out of his arms to head back inside..

It takes her a couple of steps up the porch stairs to realise that he hasn’t followed her.

“Mairon?” She asks him and watches as he turns around, the setting sun painting his features golden, catching the light on the few grey strands in his hair.

“I’ll be right in,” he tells her. “I just want to watch the sunset.”

Galadriel smiles and nods. He looks… happy. Happy and loved. Wonderfully, Galadriel feels just the same. And yes, it might not be an immortal life… but it is a perfect one. And when their time comes, they’ll face it the way they should have faced all of it.

Together.

Chapter Text

EPILOGUE: GUARDIANS OF THE VOID

The girl adjusts her armour, the breastplate that sits tightly secured around her frame, eternally ready for a fight. The palantir in front of her glows softly with the fading image of the sunset. Her father’s smile, reflecting back from the palantir, makes the girl smile down at it in turn. It is mirrored in that of her brother as he comes to find her with long strides.

“Are they back from their mushroom hunt, Meira?” Emil asks her as she puts the heavy crystal to the side, back into the secure case it belongs in, and she nods.

Sometimes it is cruel to watch their parents and their siblings in Middle Earth, knowing they are not aware of them. But someday they will be, Meira knows. Once they have completed their mission, they get to go back. To join their parents with hopefully enough time to spare to live a life with them.

Until then, the Valar have given her and her brother a task. Until then, the Valar have made it clear that their existence in this plain is conditional on them succeeding in said task. To hear the Gods tell it, Meira and Emil should not even exist, as they had been born from a non-reality. They are not real. They have not happened. And yet…

Their parent’s union, their love, had rippled through the fabric of everything. Their combined energy had created her own and Emil’s spirits, just floating about. In that space the Valar call the Void. And as soon as they understood that in their solitary non-existent existance, Meira and Emil can traverse the void freely, their fate was decided and they were made material once more.

Emil sometimes wonders aloud if the Valar are feigning much of the surprise over their miraculous existence. Instead speculating that perhaps, there had been some forethought in putting their parents together the way they did, some vague prophetic idea or theoretic possibility that him and his sister might spring from their parent‘s union to fight a losing battle for the Valar… but Meira does not entertain those thoughts. In the end, they’re immeterial.

In the end, if they want to return to their parents, they have but one path to it. To defeat Morgoth. The ultimate evil. If he ever shows himself in that Void she and Emil have been standing guard over for years and years now. They can feel him everywhere, true, but he’s like a shadow obscured by darkness. One day, though, one day they will find him and destroy him. And then they will go home.

“Maybe we’ll slip into Abrile’s dream again tonight,” Emil suggests, giving Meira a hand to pull her up from the rock she had been sitting on, outside of what they call their Void Palace, though severly lacking in comfort to be called thus, in all fairness.

“Hm,” Meira agrees. “I want to know how those mushrooms tasted, looked delicious.”

Her face must fall a little bit, with envy or longing, perhaps, because Emil puts a heavy hand on her shoulder the way he does when she gets tired or discouraged.

“One day,” he tells her. “Remember we’re doing this for them. To keep them safe and make sure Morgoth can never hurt Middle Earth again.”

Meira nods. She knows. Of course she knows.

“Patrol then?” She asks her brother.

“Patrol,” he agrees and they set out into the Void again for what feels like the thousandth time.

Maybe tonight they will finally find Morgoth and complete their destiny. And if not, Abrile will hear about their latest adventure, when they visit her in her little dream. And in her memory, Meira will taste the mushrooms and hold her little sister tight.

Just wait, little bird, she thinks as she follows her brother, one day, we’ll fly to you.

One day.

Chapter Text

Hey all of you lovely people and gentle reading folk!

With season 2 airing, I have been getting a lot of new and returning readers leaving lovely comments that made me very happy and inspired me to compile a visual guide for this fic using mostly AI-generated images based on prompts from the fic. This will also commemorate this fic's second birthday come October 14th. I hope that you find as much joy in it as I got from making it!

FIND THE FULL 16-page Visual Guide HERE.

Thank you all so much for your sweet and continued support! In recent personal news, I'm in the process of selling my first own original TV-show concept to a production company in hopes to find a network or streamer to put a series order in, so keep your fingers crossed for me! Maybe one day in the future I'll come back with a link to my first TV pilot ;)

Until then, enjoy some sneak peeks of the Visual Guide right here...